The Social Media Security Podcast

If you have been using social media or are curious of the security of this emerging technology you may be interesting reading my recently published article in issue 21 of (IN)SECURE Magazine. In my article I discuss why companies are starting to use social media, the benefits/risks and what information may be posted about your company on social media/networking web sites. I also talk about some cost effective tools your company can use to start your own social media monitoring program (without spending a ton of cash) and how to put in place guidelines for employees regarding the use of social media. Yes, even if you block these sites in the workplace employees are going to use social media/network sites outside of work if you like it or not…you had better get used to it and adapt your policies!

This article started from me actually seeing how much information there is about businesses within social networks. Both good and bad! The information I have found has been extremely valuable when conducting penetration tests. In fact, this information can be so valuable that you may be surprised how easy it is to use this information for social engineering or more…the possibilities are endless. As I pointed out in my article, get together with the business leaders in your marketing and/or public relations group and talk about social media and how to use it with a bit of security and privacy in mind. You might be surprised how receptive they are to the input from a security professional!

Do you have a BlackBerry for work and you have a corporate policy pushed down and managed by your corporate IT team? Depending on how locked down the policy is for your corporate BlackBerry deployment you may be syncing sensitive or confidential data to a public web site.

So I recently installed the Facebook Blackberry Application v1.5 on my BlackBerry and noticed two interesting settings. First, you can sync your Facebook calendar with your BlackBerry calendar. Second, you can sync your Facebook contacts with your BlackBerry contacts. As far as I can tell syncing is only one way…sort of. The Facebook application has a disclaimer when you install the application that says:

Facebook will “periodically send copies of your BlackBerry device Contacts to Facebook Inc. to match and connect with your Facebook Friends.”

So does this mean Facebook has a copy of your corporate contacts? They must somewhere to do the proper sync matching. There is another disclaimer at the bottom of the “setup wizard” that says you allow Facebook to do this interaction per the same way applications have access to your profile data in Facebook. Interesting. Again, not a nightmare situation…but if any of your business contacts are sensitive in nature I would be hesitant to enable this feature. Worse case? I couldn’t think of a worse security nightmare then of all your users automatically sending sensitive calendar entries with proprietary data to Facebook! So yeah, one way is good. For now one way sync is all the Facebook application does but I would be willing to bet that this will change in the future. Be careful with this one.

So lets step this up a bit. What about two way syncing applications like Google Sync? Google Sync will sync your Google Calendar/Contacts with your Blackberry Calendar/Contacts…both ways! This might be a real problem if you make your Google Calendar public or share it with a group of friends. Same goes for your business contacts. You may have just given Google (and possibly the world) all your business calendar entries. Well..we know Google isn’t evil, right? :-/

What can we do about this? As a user…opt out of installing any syncing apps on your corporate BlackBerry for starters. But what about blocking syncing on the device via BES policy? As far as I can tell the only way is to block the application from being installed via policy. This will become problematic when Google/Facebook releases new versions for example. Not sustainable. I’m no BES administrator but there might be other ways to prevent the application from being installed or the syncing from happening but it brings up some interesting discussion. By the way, there are some problems when you have the Facebook application and Google Sync installed at the same time. No thanks.

Something else to think about. How does your company handle BlackBerry deployments? Are they company issued and owned? Or do you allow your users to own them and the company pays for the data plan? All of this would have to be considered before blocking or preventing syncing applications (or any third-party application) from being installed. If you have any thoughts or ideas on this, comment below!

I have been seeing a bunch of friends on social networks filling out these “25 Random Things About Me” surveys. I just saw another one going around called “44 Odd Things About You” as well. I remember this similar type of activity passed along in email several years ago but now it’s made its way to social networks such as Facebook and MySpace. Here is what the request looks like once you have been “tagged” by one of your friends:

RULES: Once you’ve been tagged, you are supposed to write a note with 25 random things, facts, habits, or goals about you. At the end, choose 25 people to be tagged. You have to tag the person who tagged you. If I tagged you, it’s because I want to know more about you.

This sounds fun and a good way to network with your friends, however, let me tell you why putting in this information might be a bad idea.

What’s the big deal? This is fun…right?
One of the basic rules everyone should be following when using social networks is that you should consider everything you post as public information. For example, would you write down these 25 random things about you, stick your name on it, make copies and put them in the mailboxes of complete strangers in your neighborhood? Are all of the people you are friends with truly your friends? Will they always be your friends? How is your profile configured? Have you looked at your “Notes” application settings in Facebook? More importantly, do you allow your profile to be searched by search engines? If you posted these 25 random things to your profile and/or wall, you may have inadvertently allowed these things to be found by total strangers. Remember, personal information on social networks always seems to get out even if you do use the correct privacy settings…sometimes through no fault of your own.

Can I haz your password plz?
With these 25 random things about you someone may even be able to use your answers to gain access to your email, other social networks, bank accounts, etc…why? Check out this list of questions that are asked when requesting a “lost password” or “password reset”. Many of these are from online banking and other sensitive web sites and looks similar to…25 random things about you.

Think this doesn’t happen? This type of attack did happen to Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin last year. A hacker was able to reset her Yahoo email account password using information he found on her publicly accessible Wikipedia page. Here is a quote from the Sarah Palin hacker:

“…after the password recovery was re enabled, it took seriously 45 mins on wikipedia and google to find the info, Birthday? 15 seconds on wikipedia, zip code? well she had always been from wasilla, and it only has 2 zip codes (thanks online postal service!)

I found out later though more research that they met at high school, so I did variations of that, high, high school, eventually hit on Wasilla high I promptly changed the password to popcorn and took a cold shower”

This could happen to anyone! So by knowing some of your 25 random things, someone may be able to reset your passwords, impersonate you or even cyberstalk you. My advise? Don’t fill these things out or leave these surveys very general and not too detailed. Email might even be a safer place for this type of information…. Stop and think before you post overly detailed information about your life on social networks..it can all potentially be used against you.

If you are interested in using Twitter for information gathering/mining about potential targets for a penetration test or for “other” research…I highly recommend the very comprehensive article that Lenny Zeltser from SANS put together. Twitter is really becoming a great tool for not just marketing yourself or your business but also to find out detailed information about a company, individual or organization.

One thing I would add to Lenny’s article is that social media in general is the new “hotness” when it comes to information gathering and reconnaissance. If you are a penetration tester you really need to start leveraging all the information contained in social networks! Better yet, use Maltego which can help search multiple social networks and visually show you this data. You can even hit up the Twitter API with local transforms in the new version of Maltego…yummy!

Twitter photo via Jenny Hayden.