The explosion inWeb 2.0applications - social
networking, blogs, wikis, Second Life sites, and so on - has made
them a key target for cyber criminals, writes Matt Atkinson, a
technical consultant atScanSafe.
That makes Web 2.0 a serious issue for businesses. A recent
Forrester survey of Web 2.0 found that 20% of employees at firms
with 500 to 999 staff were blog users. According to a December 2007
survey by Computerweekly.com, staff are thought to spend an average
of 50 minutes a day on social networking sites. And Second Life
residents logged 24 million usage hours in September 2007,
according to an October Reuters report.
Double boom
The popularity of Web 2.0 applications for business and consumer
use coincides with a boom in
web-based malware.
According to
ScanSafe's 2007 Annual Global Threat Report, web malware
increased by 61% in the second half of 2007. Zero-day threats -
malware for which there is no known patch or signature - accounted
for 21% of all threats blocked, while compromised sites remain
infected longer (an average of 61 days In the second half of
2007).
Web 2.0 sites contain numerous types of malware, such as
Trojan-laced banner ads on MySpace, Photobucket and others.
Web 2.0 sites like MySpace pose a unique challenge. Users are
more likely to allow ActiveX controls or Javascript from a site
they visit frequently or one with a well-known brand name, and to
accept invitations or interaction from known users on Web 2.0
sites. If the site has been compromised, this blanket trust makes
it ripe for social engineering attacks.
Consequences
So what does this mean in practical terms for those charged with
securing web use?
It means businesses should examine existing protection from
web-based threats and look for solutions that scan http requests in
real-time rather than relying on traditional URL filtering.
Originally designed to boost employee productivity and enforce
web usage policies,
URL filtering relies on visiting each URL or crawling the web
to inventory bad sites.
Netcraft estimates there are more than 150 million active
websites, each of which has many pages. Add to this the vast number
of Web 2.0 sites powered by third-party and user-contributed
content and it doesn't take long to realise that crawling can't
keep pace in the Web 2.0 world.
If you've been relying on URL filtering as your web defence,
it's high time to re-evaluate your approach.
Matt Atkinson is a technical consultant atScanSafe