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Security in Social Networking


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#1 Holmes.Sherlock

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Posted 05 November 2011 - 12:14 PM

Have you ever pinged your friend in Facebook chat & got a really "warm" welcome with a series of slang from the other end & a threat to hack your Facebook account?

Or have you ever got a series of notification mails from Facebook containing links to porn pictures posted on your friend's wall? It is not a dramatic introduction of a typical literature to teach people the possible threats of social networking but something which happened with me this afternoon.

Immediately I changed my password (I use fairly strong password containing at least two characters from uppercase, lowercase, numbers & special characters) & logged out my Facebook account fearing that the "hacker" might have stolen my Facebook cookie via some XSS exploit or got to know my password via some keylogging method. Whatever, nothing happened to my account.

Then I called my friend & made him aware that hos account security has been compromised. He admitted the fact that saying that he was not able to log in to Facebook since yesterday due to password mismatch. He thought it to be a temporary Facebook bug ignored the fact.

However, my reason to share it with the community to have a discussion on what could be the possible strategies to prevent our social networking accounts hacked & what are to be done after one realizes that his/her account security is at stake.

Edited by Nuno Brito, 05 November 2011 - 12:18 PM.
broke block of text onto paragraphs to ease readability


#2 Brito

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Posted 05 November 2011 - 12:49 PM

Facebook is smart, it will find it strange when you are logging from a different computer and ask you a personal question to ensure that you are who you say that you are.

The only problem is that when someone that knows you relatively tries to get inside the facebook account, they usually know the answer to their questions.


What I recommend is that you don't use the real details and apply personal details that only you know about.

---

In regards to other applications like Gmail, I really love the fact that they automatically log each entry and that you can see them on the listed. This way you can verify if someone from a strange IP address has accessed your account or not.

:cheers:

#3 Holmes.Sherlock

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Posted 05 November 2011 - 12:54 PM

Facebook is smart, it will find it strange when you are logging from a different computer and ask you a personal question to ensure that you are who you say that you are.

The same happened to me last year. That time, after me accessing FB from India, by 2/3 hours someone tried to access my account from US. FB being smart enough, blocked my account temporarily & I need to re-authenticate myself by a series of mechanisms, one of them was to identify three of my friends tagged in a photo, pretty interesting & quite full-proof if the hacker is not from your close circle.

#4 Brito

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Posted 05 November 2011 - 01:14 PM

Yep, that is good for outsiders. The problem are detective girlfriends that are smart enough to get your password details from the browser history and know your friends when accessing from another machine or when you were born.. ;)

#5 Holmes.Sherlock

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Posted 05 November 2011 - 01:19 PM

The problem are detective girlfriends that are smart enough .............

Hehe. :) I am free from such attacks as I don't/ didn't have any.

BTW, I forgot to mention that I reported & lodged a written complain to our cyber crime department the next day.




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