DR. MOHAMMAD ALAA AL-HAMAMI DELMON UNIVERSITY FOR SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY

THE SECURITY AWARNESS OF SOCIAL NETWORKING SITES USAGE

INTRODUCTION

• Social networking sites enhance our

life, we can’t count the advantages that

we could get if we use them in a good

manner.

• But at the same time these sites could

be a main security threat if we don’t

have the awareness to use them in a

safety way.

INTRODUCTION

THE DANGER OF SOCIAL

NETWORKS

THE DANGER OF SOCIAL

NETWORKS

• Social networking sites can be: – A source of personal & business information leaks.

– A malware attack vector when not used carefully.

• Users trust their contacts to: – Not send bad links.

– Not trying to infect their computers.

– And take good care of their personal data.

• URL shorteners are a security concern and should be taken very seriously in social networks.

SOCIAL NETWORKS PROBLEMS

FROM A LEGAL POINT OF VIEW

SOCIAL NETWORKS PROBLEMS

FROM A LEGAL POINT OF VIEW

• Violation user’s data protection rights.

• Identity Fraud.

• Absence of uniform rule at the international

level.

WHAT COULD GO WRONG IN

SOCIAL NETWORKING SITES?

WHAT COULD GO WRONG?

• Your contact’s account is compromised and somebody else is using it.

• You added somebody to your network that you thought you knew but, in fact, you did not.

• You added somebody you thought was trustworthy but he/she turns out not to be.

• Insufficient use of privacy controls caused you to share data with people you never intended.

WHAT DATA THAT COULD BE

MINED IN SOCIAL NETWORKS?

Social networks contain a wealth of

information like:

DATA THAT COULD BE MINED IN

SOCIAL NETWORKS

• USER IDENTIFIERS AND ATTRIBUTES.

• CONTACT INFORMATION .

• WORK.

• EDUCATION.

• PERSONAL INFORMATION AND INTERESTS .

• CONNECTION AND USAGE INFORMATION .

These information

are treasure for

Attackers and

Criminals !

SO WHAT ATTACKERS WILL

DO WITH THE MINED DATA?

SO WHAT ATTACKERS WILL DO

WITH THE MINED DATA?

• Underground forums sell information:

– Your data can be mined and stored somewhere in the dark corners of the Internet waiting for a criminal to pay the right price for it.

– Criminals can use this information to obtain birth certificates/passports and other documents.

MOST IMPORTANT DATA

FOR ATTACKERS

MOST IMPORTANT DATA FOR

ATTACKERS

• Email addresses:

– Used for spam campaigns.

– Can be categorized to improve the impact of the campaign like age, country and other factors so that its market price is higher than just any normal email address.

– Can also be a great value for phishing campaigns.

• Real-life addresses:

– Often shared in social networking sites.

– They can be used to collect mailing databases

for advertising purposes in a similar way as

described above.

MOST IMPORTANT DATA FOR

ATTACKERS

• Date of birth:

– Used by different companies to confirm

people’s identities over the telephone.

– Criminals have tools to automate “date of birth”

searches in social networking sites.

MOST IMPORTANT DATA FOR

ATTACKERS

• Public Profile:

– A potential massive data-leak-age.

– Social networking search engines can search all available data about any name in a certain region.

– Public profile makes the lives of stalkers, fraudsters, or any other attackers much easier.

MOST IMPORTANT DATA FOR

ATTACKERS

PRIVACY IN A CONNECTED

WORLD: A STORY

PRIVACY IN A CONNECTED WORLD:

A STORY

• In July 2009, the wife of a high-level government executive in the UK published personal data in a social networking site.

• This had get a lot of attention: – Not for the confidentiality of the content,

– But for the lack of awareness about the accessibility of your online content.

– There is also another issue to play here, the fact that once you publish anything online, you will lose the control over it, people leech and republish it on places you do not even know !

HOW CAN ATTACKERS FOOL

SOCIAL NETWORKS USERS?

HOW CAN ATTACKERS FOOL SOCIAL

NETWORKS USERS?

• Creating a fake celebrity profile.

• Creating a duplicate of somebody’s profile.

• Creating a profile, adding themselves to a medium-sized group or community. Then joining a second group and starting again.

• Creating a female profile and publishing a pretty picture of “herself”.

WHY ATTACKERS SUCCESS IN FOOLING

SOCIAL NETWORKS USERS?

WHY ATTACKERS SUCCESS IN FOOLING

SOCIAL NETWORKS USERS?

- A lot of users don’t realize that:

- Their contact lists is a circle of trust.

- And by adding somebody they don’t know

they are opening their data to untrusted

parties.

- Some sites don’t have privacy controls in

place, or the ones they have do not protect

all user data.

- The user is often not concern to select who

can access his/her data.

- The user don’t use the available controls

because they appear too complex or time-

consuming (laziness or lack of knowledge).

WHY ATTACKERS SUCCESS IN FOOLING

SOCIAL NETWORKS USERS?

WHAT CAN AN ATTACKER DO WITH

LARGE NETWORK OF USERS?

WHAT CAN AN ATTACKER DO ?

• Advertise.

• Collect Contact Information.

• Phishing.

• Malware Installation.

WHEN SOCIAL NETWORKING

SITES CODE BREAKS !

WHEN CODE BREAKS

• Attack vector is the exploitation of programming flaws in websites.

• These Web pages have been made by humans and they can have errors that could compromise the site’s security measures.

• Poor security, weak administration practices, or badly written code can all help attackers to gather your data or help them stage a bigger attack against any number of users.

• Social networking sites keep adding to their security controls and refining their existing ones.

• But as in any development project, they also continue to innovate on their platforms and add exciting new features.

• These new options need to keep up with the security features or they too will suffer from security weaknesses.

WHEN CODE BREAKS

CODE BREAKS EXAMPLES

Pinterest

• In Pinterest, a cross-site scripting

vulnerability and an iframe injection issue

had been identified that could allow

hackers to hijack user accounts and

perform other malicious operations.

• It had been found a URL redirection flaw

that could redirect the site’s visitors to

other potentially malicious domains.

CODE BREAKS EXAMPLES

Facebook

• There have been instances of security flaws

on Facebook that allowed anybody to access

the “basic information” data of any user, no

matter what their security settings were.

• This attack was released by casual users after

Facebook ignored the users’ warnings for a

few days. No great knowledge was needed in

this case to exploit a security weakness.

CODE BREAKS EXAMPLES

• Twitter had “cross-site scripting” attacks

performed against it. In these attacks, the

attackers could change the Twitter status

of any user accessing the attacker’s

account.

• This meant that the bad guys could make

you tweet bad links so your Twitter

followers would be at risk of being

infected.

Twitter

CODE BREAKS EXAMPLES

• MySpace was attacked in 2007 by a JavaScript

that would copy itself to the viewer’s profile

along with a piece of text—“Samy is my hero.”

This was caused by a security flaw that could

have caused the victim to run any other

command like redirecting the page to a

malicious website.

• Thankfully, the young man who discovered the

flaw and created the worm only wanted to have

more friends added to his profile.

MySpace

• These Four examples are not the only cases of security flaws on social networking sites.

• In fact, such flaws are identified frequently.

• News about such security holes are released every month and are a concern for all affected web-sites and their users.

• Since their solution is out of the user’s hands, it is difficult or impossible to do anything about them.

WHEN CODE BREAKS:

EXAMPLES

• There are some simple steps and points

that we should consider to protect our

privacy in social networks such as:

– Keep your information as general as possible.

– Read the privacy policy of social networking

sites.

– Do not add people that you don’t Know or

trust.

SUMMARY

– If you are using social networks to meet new

people you should create a special account

for that.

– Do not click any unknown or suspicious

hyperlinks.

– Remember that any data you publish in the

Internet it will be there forever and anyone

could use and share it.

SUMMARY

REFERENCES [1] http://www.hausarbeiten.de/faecher/vorschau/147360.html

[2] http://us.trendmicro.com/us/trendwatch/current-threat activity/undergroundeconomy/index.html

[3] http://www.w3.org/2008/09/msnws/papers/NETWORKS_LEGAL_PROBLEMS.PDF

[4] http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1197562/MI6-chief-blows-cover-wifes-Facebook-account-revealsfamily-holidays-showbiz-friends-links-David-Irving.html

[5] http://www.onrec.com/newsstories/17612.asp

[6] http://www.scmagazineus.com/Facebook-bloggers-reveal-way-to-peek-at-private-profiles/article/138867/

[7] http://blogs.computerworld.com/twitter_stalkdaily_mikeyy_xss_worm

[8] http://www.betanews.com/article/CrossSite-Scripting-Worm-Hits-MySpace/1129232391