Facebook, Twitter to face more sophisticated attacks: McAfee

Social networks will face increasingly sophisticated hacker attacks in 2010 but law enforcement is expected to make strides in fighting cybercrime, according to Web security firm McAfee Labs.

"The explosion of applications on Facebook and other services will be an ideal vector for cybercriminals, who will take advantage of friends trusting friends to click links they might otherwise treat cautiously," McAfee said.

In its 2010 Threat Predictions report, McAfee also said it expected to see increased threats to banking security and a rise in the use of "botnets," armies of infected computers used to spread malicious software or malware.

"However, in 2010 we expect to see an increase in the effectiveness of law enforcement to fight back against cybercrime," the Santa Clara, California, computer security firm said in the report released on Tuesday.

McAfee said Adobe products were likely to come under increasing threat next year and the release by Google of its Chrome computer operating system would "create another opportunity for malware writers to prey on users."

"Cybercriminals have long picked on Microsoft products due to their popularity," the report said. "In 2010, we anticipate Adobe software, especially Acrobat Reader and Flash, will take the top spot."

"Based on the current trends, we expect that in 2010 Adobe product exploitation is likely to surpass that of Microsoft Office applications in the number of desktop PCs being attacked," it said. AFP

Twitter hacked, attacker claims Iran link

A computer hacker briefly hijacked Twitter.com on Thursday, redirecting users to a website and claiming to represent a group calling itself the Iranian Cyber Army.

Twitter, which in June became a key communication channel for Iranian protesters disputing the country's election results, said it was disrupted for a little more than an hour.

Twitter's home page was replaced with one whose headline read "This site has been hacked by Iranian Cyber Army" and an anti-American message.

"The motive for this attack appears to have been focused on defacing our site, not aimed at users," Twitter said on its blog. "We don't believe any accounts were compromised."moneycontrol

Security experts said it was the first time attackers have succeeded in hijacking a major social-networking website.

It was unlikely that the Iranian government was involved, despite its dislike of social networking sites and years of discord with the United States over its nuclear program, experts said.

A screen shot posted in a number of websites, including TechCrunch, shows the message written in red, set above a green flag. An e-mail sent to the address on the redirected Web page was returned.

The hacker or hackers got credentials to redirect Twitter's traffic to a bogus site, according to Dyn Inc, a company based in New Hampshire that directs that traffic for Twitter.

The attackers did not hijack accounts of the company's other customers, Dyn Vice President Kyle York said. "This was an isolated incident," he said.