Social Networks Potential targets for Cybercriminals reports McAfee Inc

Facebook, Twitter, basically social networking sites are potential targets for the cybercriminals in the year 2010, reports, McAfee Inc, world’s largest dedicated security technology.

McAfee said, that the blowup of apps on Facebook and other services will be a perfect vector for cybercriminals, who will take advantage of friends relying friends to click links they might otherwise treat carefully. Web users rely on friends and trust them as the link is send to them by their friends and family.

There are 350 million users of Facebook and that is a fairly target-rich environs. McAfee has also admonished that URL shorteners, like those used to fit Twitter’s 140-character limit, make the cyber criminal’s task even easier.

Symantec in its recent report on 2010 threats, said, URL shortening services will “become the phisher’s best friend.”

McAfee also reported that the release of Google Chrome OS and the technological advancements of HTML 5 will go on to shift user activity from desktop to online applications, creating yet another opportunity for malware writers to prey on users.

The growing popularity of Adobe applications will give an opportunity to cybercriminals to target Adobe products, primarily Acrobat Reader and Flash, two of the most widely deployed applications in the world, McAfee lab anticipated.

Consumer’s online banking will be the major threat on financial sites and is probable to increase in 2010.

McAfee Labs also forebodes 2010 will be a good year for law enforcement’s fight against cybercrime.

Jeff Green, Senior Vice President of McAfee Labs said in the press statement, that over the past decade, they have seen an enormous advancement in the ability to successfully monitor, reveal, and stop cybercrime. “We’re now facing emerging threats from the explosive growth of social networking sites, the exploitation of popular applications and more advanced techniques used by cybercriminals, but we’re confident that 2010 will be a successful year for the cybersecurity community.”

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