The Phishing of Applications on Social Networking Websites

The popularity of applications on social networking websites has increased a great deal this year. This has led to a new wave of phishing attacks targeting the users of these applications. Symantec has examined phishing websites exploiting three major social networking brands. The fake websites display attractive offers on the social networking applications to lure end users. Some of the applications that the phishing sites were based on are:
1.    Social networking on mobile – Due to the rise in the number of users accessing the Internet through smart phones, social networking websites have expanded their services on smart phones, including messaging, chatting, photo viewing, etc. This increase in users has opened more doors to attackers because there are now more potential victims. Hence, attackers have created phishing websites on social networking brands claiming to provide these services on smart phones.
2.    Live chat – In November, Symantec observed that five percent of the targeted applications were on live chat, and among them adult sex chat was the most common target. The phishing attacks show fake offers of free sex chat to lure end users into entering their login credentials.
3.    Blogging – Phishing websites that attacked blogging in social networking comprised 23 percent of all targeted applications. Various attractive blog topics are used in the login pages of the phishing site as a means to (continue reading...)