PI Newswire

“While it is true that Facebook has at least 60,000 servers, it is still possible to bring it down.”

These are the words of the anonymous voice that purports to represent Anonymous in a video posted to YouTube today.

“An online war has begun between Anonymous, the people, and the government of the United States,” the narrator begins. The reason: SOPA, PIPA and other perceived threats to Internet rights.

In order to bring down Facebook, the video asks for everyone who understands and supports Anonymous’ position to participate in this online protest. This is a protest that began over the last week, says the narrator, with attacks on the CBS.com, Warner Brothers, and FBI sites.

The narrator suggests that anyone who supports the cause download a program in order to participate in a Facebook attack.

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Julie Chambers’ heartbreaking experience of losing her 2-year-old daughter was made worse in an unimaginable way.

The mother from northeastern England recently discovered a fraudulent Facebook page with pictures of herself and her daughter, Zoe, who died in 2008 after undergoing heart surgery, the Daily Mail reports. The site was taking donations for a transplant for Zoe, who was born with a heart valve that was too narrow.

“It would have been hard enough to handle if Zoe had been alive, but she isn’t with us,” Chambers, 37, said. “She’s dead and someone has used her picture to con people out of money.”

The Facebook page, traced back to Jamaica, asked visitors to “share” the link, which would result in a free heart transplant should 1,000 people participate. The page also accepted donations to a personal PayPal account. Though Chambers has contacted police, she doesn’t have a case since money hasn’t been directly stolen from her, the Daily Mail reports.

Unfortunately using the names and identities of children for fraudulent purposes isn’t uncommon, and some thieves go a step further.

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Koobface has been a thorn in the side of Web sites for years now. But starting today, Facebook is responding with salvos that could put the gang on the run.

According to The New York Times, the world’s largest social network will announce today that it’s planning to share boatloads of information it has gathered over the years about the Koobface Gang. The Times said today that Facebook believes “public namings” could go a long way toward stopping the gang from operating, and potentially help law enforcement officials start taking it down.

Koobface is responsible for a computer worm of the same name that, for over three years, has targeted social networks, including Facebook. The worm targets Windows and Mac OS X users by getting them to click on malicious links. The malware is notable for not attempting to steal financial information. The people behind Koobface make money by using the peer-to-peer botnet to download pay-per-install malware on computers and redirecting search queries to display ads.

Though Facebook is expected to offer up a relatively large data dump, security researcher Sophos has preempted that, revealing a host of details on the gang, including its real name, “Ali Baba & 4.” Both The New York Times and Sophos claim to have the names of the gang members, which the sources say, work out of St. Petersburg.

Facebook has had some information on the gang since 2008, Ryan McGeehan, Facebook manager of investigations and incident response, told the Times. And over the last several years, it has continued to gather intelligence and safeguard users from attacks.

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Hackers in China have found a way to infiltrate supposedly secure smart cards used by U.S. government employees, according to security company AlienVault.

The security firm said it has seen dozens of such attacks, which tap into a unique variant of a nasty bit of malware known as Sykipot.

The hackers appear intent on stealing data from the Department of Defense and other related agencies. The malware is capable of capturing the PIN numbers used by government smart cards, thereby allowing access to supposedly secure information.

“Like we have shown with previous Sykipot attacks, the attackers use a spear phishing campaign to get their targets to open a PDF attachment which then deposits the Sykipot malware onto their machine,” according to AlienVault. “Then, unlike previous strains, the malware uses a keylogger to steal PINs for the cards. When a card is inserted into the reader, the malware then acts as the authenticated user and can access sensitive information. The malware is controlled by the attackers from the command & control center.”

Government agencies use smart cards as an extra layer of security on top of passwords, according to the New York Times. Since passwords have been easy enough to hack, the smart cards were supposed to provide a final line of defense, at least until the new strain of Sykipot popped up.

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The phenomenon has grown into cliché: A marriage long grown stale through rote gestures and the drudgery of childrearing. An old flame pops up on Facebook. Innocent flirting ensues. Next thing you know, you’ve got an STD test in one hand and divorce papers in the other. What happened?

• Facebook cited as a factor in one third of UK divorces last year
• No surprise to divorce lawyers in the U.S.
• Social media turns up as evidence in front of judge

Online Friendship Gone Awry

A new survey by UK-based site Divorce-Online reported that Facebook played a role in one in three divorces in 2011 in the island nation.

The 2009 Divorce-Online survey turned up 20 percent, so the number appears to only be growing. A figure widely circulated in news reports last year suggested that Facebook played a role in one in five divorces here in the States.

Given the ever-expanding role social media plays in the way we communicate, it’s no surprise it should be a common factor in divorce. “I hear it all the time,” says Brent Rose, a partner at Orsini and Rose Law Firm in Florida. “Most divorce lawyers know that Facebook is a contributor to their caseloads. It’s not at all uncommon for a client to tell you that the reason for the divorce is that a spouse has connected with an ‘old flame’ or a ‘first love from high school’ through Facebook.”

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Two U.S. congressman have charged Facebook with evading questions on whether it tracks users for targeted ads.

Meanwhile, Facebook has gone ahead and filed a patent that enables it to do just that, all the while insisting it has no intent to track users when they’re not logged into the social media network.

The congressmen, Joe Barton, a Texas Republican, and Edward Markey, a Massachusetts Democrat, asked the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to look into accusations that Facebook still tracks users who’ve logged out, in spite of Facebook’s claims to have fixed the issue.

Here’s what Barton told ZDNet’s Emil Protalinski about Facebook talking from both sides of its gigantic social media face:

Facebook seems to be saying one thing and doing another. In the company’s response, it talks a lot about how they don’t currently “track” users online, but they just asked for a patent that would allow them to do just that. Why ask for something you don’t ever plan on using? I don’t believe that Facebook adequately addresses that question. If they get a patent that among other things explicitly mentions tracking the information about the activities of users of a social networking system while on another domain — how will it be used?

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You may be seeing less spam in your email inbox and more on your Facebook wall, according to internet experts.

That’s because spammers are increasingly targeting social media sites like Twitter and Facebook.

According to the Wall Street Journal, spammers hit four million Facebook users every day. However, Facebook is fighting back by blocking 200 million malicious actions a day. Those are posts with links to things like viruses, spyware and malware.

With more than 800 million users, experts say preventing and detecting spam on Facebook is becoming more difficult.

They say there are ways you can protect yourself and your devices.

“If you see a post on your wall that looks suspicious delete it immediately,” Nicholas Skrepetos, CTO of consumer software for Support.com told 9NEWS. “If something doesn’t look right it’s probably not right. Don’t install applications on Facebook if you aren’t 100 percent sure that they’re safe. If you see someone that says, ‘Hey install this really cool application. It will let you see who’s looking at your profile,’ it’s probably not true.”

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Following this story a Facebook spokesperson got in contact with us to tell us, “Protecting the people who use Facebook has always been our top priority. We provide a safe and more trusted online environment by design, offering people industry-leading tools to control what they share and with whom they share it. These controls help protect children and parents involved in adoption from unwanted contact online. We encourage adoptive and foster parents and children to adjust their privacy settings to control who can contact them on Facebook. These settings allow you to control who can send you messages and friend requests, who can see photos and personal information, as well as how you can be found in search. These privacy settings also allow you to block people who you don’t want any contact with. Unlike many other communication platforms, Facebook also has a robust reporting system in place and our users do and can report people who are contacting them without due consent.”

Natural parents using Facebook and other social networking sites to contact children they put up for adoption is on the rise, according to the charity Adoption UK.

With the ease of use of the internet for many youngsters, it’s believed it’s now more likely adopted children will hear from their birth parents before they’ve turned 18. This type of uncontrolled and unplanned contact is often in breach of contract.

Jonathan Pearce, chief executive of Adoption UK, claims that unsupported communication has already had a dramatic impact on adoption. Children have reportedly heard from their biological parents after being put into care back in the 1990s.

The British Association for Adoption and Fostering (BAAF) has previously warned that the ability to search for photos or names on the web will make tracing natural parents easier. But as David Holmes, chief executive of BAAF, notes, it’s not that social media needs to be targeted as a source of disruption to adoption, but that steps need to be taken to help understand how it can be used positively and safely throughout the adoption process.

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Employers and recruiters have discovered a treasure trove of information about potential job applicants on social media sites such as Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter, and so-called ‘social media background checks’ are becoming more popular and prevalent than ever. However, the use of social media background checks for job applicants has become controversial and can present legal risks. Failure to utilize social media resources can arguably be the basis of a negligent hiring claim if an unfit person was hired for a position where a search of the internet may have raised a “red flag.” Conversely, employers face numerous landmines and pitfalls that can include that include privacy, discrimination, and accuracy issues. Lawsuits and developments in this area will likely be an ongoing topic in 2012. This is Trend Number 3 of the fifth annual ‘Employment Screening Resources (ESR) Top 10 Trends in Background Checks’ for 2012. To view the list of trends, visit http://www.esrcheck.com/ESR-Top-10-Trends-in-Background-Checks-for-2012.php.
The Lure of Social Media Background Checks

It is important to keep in mind that not only will social media searches be a critical part of pre-employment background screening, but there may be considerable activity in how social media is handled after a person is hired. Every employer should have a social media policy for current employees. This article, however, is focused on pre-employment selection and screening.

No discussion on employment screening background checks these days is complete without an analysis of how the Internet is used for uncovering information about job candidates. A social media search allows an employer to literally “look under the hood,” and hopefully find out who a person really is. Not only does a social media search help in finding candidates, but it may prove to be an invaluable due diligence tool. For example, if a person’s blogs, social networking page, or tweets appear to promote inappropriate sexual activity or perhaps threats of violence, an employer may want to think twice before putting such a person in contact with groups at risk, such as children, the aged, or the infirmed. Likewise, if a person has made derogatory or unprofessional comments about co-workers or past employers, or engaged in online harassment, those are things that any Human Resources manager may be interested in knowing about.

However, while employers and recruiters may feel they hit the information jackpot on potential job applicants by using social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter, business networking sites like LinkedIn, videos on YouTube, search engines like Google, and various blogs and posts, the unrestricted use of social media background checks can land them in hot water since just because certain information is online does not mean it is risk free or even true.

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A worm previously used to commit financial fraud is now stealing Facebook login credentials, compromising at least 45,000 Facebook accounts with the goals of transmitting malicious links to victims’ friends and gaining remote access to corporate networks.

The security company Seculert has been tracking the progress of Ramnit, a worm first discovered in April 2010, and described by Microsoft as “multi-component malware that infects Windows executable files, Microsoft Office files and HTML files” in order to steal “sensitive information such as saved FTP credentials and browser cookies.” Ramnit has previously been used to “bypass two-factor authentication and transaction signing systems, gain remote access to financial institutions, compromise online banking sessions and penetrate several corporate networks,” Seculert says.

Recently, Seculert set up a sinkhole and discovered that 800,000 machines were infected between September and December. Moreover, Seculert found that more than 45,000 Facebook login credentials, mostly in the UK and France, were stolen by a new variant of the worm.

“We suspect that the attackers behind Ramnit are using the stolen credentials to log-in to victims’ Facebook accounts and to transmit malicious links to their friends, thereby magnifying the malware’s spread even further,” Seculert said. “In addition, cybercriminals are taking advantage of the fact that users tend to use the same password in various web-based services (Facebook, Gmail, Corporate SSL VPN, Outlook Web Access, etc.) to gain remote access to corporate networks.”

Facebook fraud, of course, is nothing new. Facebook itself has acknowledged seeing 600,000 compromised logins each day, although that accounts for just 0.06 percent of the one billion Facebook logins each day.

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A new site, MyPermissions.org, makes it easy to herd a posse of wild cats – aka the hoard of applications and sites to which we’ve granted permission to access our information on Twitter, Facebook and more.

MyPermissions doesn’t ask for your personal information or login details, thank goodness. Otherwise, it would be a phishing goldmine.

Rather, the site simply offers a handy set of links to permissions lists. It also allows you to easily revoke access from the permissions pages.

On top of that, MyPermissions offers a reminder service: a monthly email via ifttt that prompts you to check your permissions.

Of course, you can set up a reminder on your own calendar and bookmark permissions pages on your own, but MyPermissions is a handy place to do it all from one spot.

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Last May, long before the iPhone 4S was released, a bunch of Facebook users got tricked into spreading spam by clicking on a link attached to this headline: “First Exposure: Apple iPhone 5.”

People who normally ignore all the other scams involving purported free software or naked celebrity photos clicked that fake news link and even completed a captcha on a second site, which reposted the scam to their own Facebook stream. That probably says more about how fanatical people are about Apple products than anything else. But it did raise the question–what does it take to lure someone to click on something that seems fishy?

A recent survey from The Ponemon Institute and PC Tools dives into this question and reveals a real gap between how aware Americans think they are of scams and how likely they actually are to fall for them.

For instance, 47 percent of U.S. respondents identified an online survey with a prize as either a scam or an attempt to get the consumer to buy something later. However, when presented with specific scenarios, 55 percent of the respondents said they would be likely to provide their personal information to redeem a prize after completing a survey. Test scenarios involved how likely respondents feel they would be to provide personal information in exchange for offers like free movie or antivirus software, get rich quick opportunity, online shopping registration and online donations.

For the survey, more than 1,800 people in the U.S. were questioned this fall, as well as more than 1,000 in Australia and more than 1,300 people in the U.K.

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