Facebook Malware Blocking

The "social graph" that Facebook provides is it's main source of power and value to it's users. However, from a security standpoint, this is also Facebook's Achilles Heel. Malware attacks spread through the network often manifest themselves as notices from a users closest friends and coworkers. While these same types of trusted relationships were sometimes possible to exploit via email lists in the past, Facebook communications often have a more playful tone then standard email communications. Messages such as "Zombie Bites" and "Joe just owned you... see how much you're worth" are the norm. Given this environment of lighthearted and often cryptic messages, it's often difficult for even savvy IT professionals to sniff out the scams and malware from the "real" messages.

In the past few months Facebook has stepped up it's measures to protect it's user base from malware bring spread via it's network. The Facebook Security Page highlights some of the current threats being spread via the site. While full disclosure of the threats being actively seen on Facebook is valuable, average Facebook users will likely never come across this page. What is far more helpful is a recent move by Facebook to warn users of malicious pages and content being spread over their network. In the image below Facebook has warned the user that the page they were being directed to by a trusted friend is in fact a malicious website. This is the right direction, but obviously we'd prefer to have seen Facebook block this content before ever passing it along in the first place. Hopefully this is the direction Facebook is headed.

As social networks such as Facebook, LinkedIn, and MySpace continue to grow and increasingly open APIs to allow third party application to interact with their social maps, these networks become increasingly attractive targets for hackers and cyber criminals. The convergence of Social Networks with other cloud computing systems such as Salesforce.com, Google Docs, Zoho and others will make these networks even more attractive targets. The writing is on the wall, the next front in cyber warfare is likely to be fought on Social Networks and in The Cloud.

Tell us what you think. Are malware attacks on Facebook and other social networks a real threat today?