Social network searches could be a hacker's dream

Dec 142009

By Byron Acohido, USA TODAY

The race to include up-to-the-minute postings from popular social networks atop search results from Google, Microsoft Bing and Yahoo Search should trigger a boon — for spammers and cybercriminals.

That’s the consensus of search and tech security experts following Google’s announcement that it has now matched Microsoft’s and Yahoo’s recent moves to integrate Twitter micro-blog entries prominently in search results. The Big Three search services are also moving to incorporate Facebook postings into search results in near real-time.

Meanwhile, spammers and hackers are out in force. Spam accounts for 88% of all e-mails, and the number of newly compromised websites detected and blocked by Symantec’s MessageLabs division averaged 2,465 per day this year, up nearly 8% from 2,290 in 2008.

Links to corrupted websites continue to turn up in search results. And spam messages and infectious postings continue to infest social networks. Combining the two seems likely to tilt the advantage to the bad guys. “This is just going to amplify the bad effects and make it easier for spammers and hackers to get their stuff to the top of search results,” says Michael Greene, security analyst at PC Tools.