Definition of the Subject
Online social networking communities are connecting hundreds of millions of individuals across the globe and facilitating new modes ofinteraction. Due to their immense popularity, an important question is whether these communities are safe for their users. In this paper, we address thissafety question and show that social networking communities are susceptible to numerous attacks. Specifically, we identify two attack classes:traditional attacks that have been adapted to these communities (e. g., malware propagation, spam, and phishing) and new attacks that have emergedthrough malicious social networking profiles (e. g., rogue advertising profiles and impersonating profiles). Concretely, we describe examples ofthese attack types that are observable in MySpace, which is currently the most popular social networking community.
Introduction
Over the past few years, social networking communities have experienced unprecedented growth. Communities such as MySpace and...
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- Social networking community :
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A community of individuals (users) that are connected based on mutually shared activities, beliefs, goals, or relationships.
- Profile :
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A user‐controlled web page that contains a picture of a community user along with various pieces of personal information for that user. This is often the online representation of an individual in a social networking community.
- Friend request:
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A communication mechanism that allows community users to initiate connections between their profiles and the profiles of their friends.
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© 2009 Springer-Verlag
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Webb, S., Caverlee, J., Pu, C. (2009). Granular Computing System Vulnerabilities: Exploring the Dark Side of Social Networking Communities. In: Meyers, R. (eds) Encyclopedia of Complexity and Systems Science. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-30440-3_258
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-30440-3_258
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