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How your facebook password was stolen, and why

By on Monday, December 19th, 2011 | No Comments

by Dave Michmerhuizen & Luis Chapetti – Security Researchers

 

Here’s something we hear regularly at Barracuda Labs…

“My mom called me and said that someone posted something bad on her facebook.  How did they do that? What should I tell her?”

Our two-part answer is simple.  First, mom probably clicked on something and unwittingly gave it permission to post to her wall.  Second, there is always a possibility that mom had her password stolen.   She should change her Facebook password at once, as well as change the password on any service where she might have used that same password.

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Do we really want better spam detection on social networks?

By on Thursday, December 15th, 2011 | No Comments

by Daniel Peck, Research Scientist

The question sounds crazy, especially for someone who’s spent a fair amount of the last year working on making spam and other malicious message detection on social networks better.  But we do a disservice to tools geared for protection when we don’t think long term about the consequences of them.  Does better spam detection on say twitter for example reduce the total amount of spam that users see, or does it just change the signal to noise ratio?

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The more connected the more vulnerable

By on Tuesday, December 13th, 2011 | No Comments

by Daniel Peck, Research Scientist

The Facebook data team put out some interesting data a few days ago focusing on the connectedness of their social graph, taking six degrees of Kevin Bacon and looking at how many connections away from each any two people on the network are. From their research it seems like more than 90% of people on the network are seperated by only 4 degrees, meaning that any person A has a friend that knows a friend of Person B.

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Personal Safety: Two Rules For Dealing With Spam

By on Wednesday, December 7th, 2011 | No Comments

by Dave Michmerhuizen & Luis Chapetti – Security Researchers


The Barracuda Labs spam traps recently received a burst of phishing emails targeting Bank of America customers. These particularly well-crafted messages underscore two important rules when dealing with spam.

Rule # 1:  Never click on a link in an email, no matter how authentic it might appear.

Rule # 2:  If a dialog asks you if you want to RUN something, don’t.

Many people think they can effectively spot spam by looking for the tell-tale clues such as poor grammar or misspellings. Modern spam campaigns render this approach ineffective.

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Seven Annoying Attacks That Facebook Misses

By on Wednesday, November 16th, 2011 | No Comments

This week Facebook experienced a rash of attacks that posted pornographic images. Some even claimed to be nude celebrities and others claimed to be child pornography. Last month we released survey results that showed that 40% of Facebook users do not feel safe on Facebook. Two weeks later, Facebook released an infographic showing its security initiatives and statistics. We applaud the efforts; however, more is needed. When you are trying to grow a social network as well as increase advertising revenue, security becomes not only a lower priority but sometimes a conflict of interest.

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Mommar Gaddafi – 419 spam’s new favorite subject

By on Friday, October 21st, 2011 | No Comments

by Dave Michmerhuizen & Luis Chapetti – Security Researchers

When you are engaged in direct marketing, your first order of business is to get the attention of your customer.  This is just as true for Nigerian 419 spammers as it is for everyone else, and widespread news coverage of the recent death of Mommar Gaddafi is a gift for the Lads from Lagos.

The spam monitors at Barracuda Labs have been detecting a steady stream of these spams, where the family of a dead African prince has been hastily replaced by the son of the dead Libyan dictator.

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Barracuda Labs Releases 2011 Social Networking Security and Privacy Study

By on Wednesday, October 12th, 2011 | No Comments

By: Barracuda Labs

For Immediate Release

NINE OUT OF 10 PEOPLE ATTACKED AND ONE OUT OF FIVE PEOPLE DAMAGED BY PRIVACY LAPSE ON SOCIAL NETWORKS

Barracuda Labs Releases 2011 Social Networking Security & Privacy Study

Campbell, Calif. (Oct. 12, 2011) – Barracuda Labs today released its 2011 Social Networking Security & Privacy Study. The complete study and infographic can be seen at www.barracudalabs.com. Barracuda Labs is the research arm of Barracuda Networks Inc., the leading provider of security, application delivery and data protection solutions to businesses.

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Spammers exploit Steve Jobs death

By on Friday, October 7th, 2011 | No Comments

By Dave Michmerhuizen – Security Researcher

Apple Chairman Steve Jobs passed away on October 5, 2011. We all share in the sadness of losing such a technology leader, visionary and innovator. Steve impacted our lives in a multitude of positive ways, through his spirit, his creativity and the word-class products he brought to market. Apple’s offerings are both mainstream tools and sources of joy – solving problems and brightening lives everyday, all over the world.  We wish for peace for Steve Jobs and his family.

Unfortunately while many are mourning, others are trying to take advantage of them. Only 24 hours after Jobs’ death spammers began sending insensitive emails claiming otherwise.

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Do you ever worry about police impersonations?

By on Thursday, August 18th, 2011 | No Comments

by Shawn Anderson – Security Researcher

Have you ever driven down the road with a police vehicle right behind you? Do your nerves heighten and your stomach drop? This happens to a lot of people, and when the flashing lights turn on there is one thing to do. Pull over, right? The pure adrenaline rush from thinking, “what did I do wrong?” masks the paranoia of “is this person really a police officer?”

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Spam Legitimacy Through Url Redirection

By on Tuesday, August 9th, 2011 | No Comments

by Daniel Peck, Research Scientist

Usually relegated to little more than page filler on vulnerability assessment reports, open URL redirection is a vulnerability that doesn’t usually affect the site owner, but can be leveraged to add a sense of false legitimacy to spam and phishing links going through it. This is nothing new in the world of spam, but we haven’t seen a lot of it in social network spam until recently. What usually is easy for moderately savvy users to detect becomes much more difficult when shared through a Facebook link, which as we’ve seen before is trivial for malicious types to create with “likejacking” when an unsuspecting user visits their page.

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