Online Social Networks: A Vehicle for Malware Propagation

Online Social Networks: A Vehicle for Malware Propagation

Authors Joseph Ehinome Ikhalia & Johnnes Arreymbi, 

Online users have completely changed the initial concept of social networks and how they have been perceived in recent years. Online Social Networks (OSNs) have completely changed in form, scope and nature, by the way Internet users create, view, share, present and/or use information. As a result, many vulnerabilities have emerged and the security threats, attacks, and malware of OSNs continue to increase because malicious or malevolent users commonly referred to, as ‘attackers’ often take advantage of the inferred trust relationships inherent in social networking to promote cybercrimes. This paper aims to investigate commonly used approaches to malware propagation on online social network systems, by examining their attack vectors and present a qualitative review of the findings. The study shows that online social networks are still vulnerable to Cross site scripting (XSS) and Clickjacking attacks. We further show that Clickjacking using malware URL links is still the dominant source of malware propagation on online social networks. Finally, we propose areas for further research used to stem the use of OSNs as a medium for malware distribution.

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