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Sayurusara 2019 December 53
Governments are mainly attracted by could be very useful for intelligence gathering and
social media due to the possibility of being able to prediction.
support military operations such as:
Malware-based cyber attacks
a. Psychological Operations
b. Cyber espionage Malware authors are very interested on
c. Offensive purposes the use of social media platforms mainly because
they could spread malicious code to a wide
Using social media militias could enable a audience who have low awareness on principal
cyber-offensive act against foreign governments. cyber threats. In a military context, the use of
Let’s say, for example, a cyber-espionage campaign social media could allow attackers to recruit a
for the diffusion of specific crafted malware, but large number of bots to conduct a successful
with powerful social platforms, this could also offensive against critical targets (e.g. critical
be used to influence the global sentiment of a infrastructures). Another advantage in exploiting
population in countries feeding such dissent social media platforms is the possibility to target
against the central authorities. Another alternative groups of individuals of a selected community who
use of social network is for propaganda to spread a share particular attitudes and habits, typically for
religion or an ideology widely and efficiently. cyber espionage purposes. According to the IBM
X-Force 2012 Mid-year Trend and Risk Report,
Many governments are promoting the social networks have been the dominant targets of
growth of internal cyber units composed by email phishing for more than two years, and drive-
specialists who analyze in real time the principal by downloads are becoming the principal method
source of interest to monitor a global situation of infection. In the last couple of years, specially
from cyber space, like a cyber-eye on the real crafted malware have been spread through social
world. These teams are also working on the media allowing large scale attacks as well as APT
definition of a new generation of instruments that attacks. Social network platforms have been used
could be used for real time analysis of so large a for bot recruiting and also for hiding the command
quantity of information with the specific intent of and control infrastructure and related traffic.
providing early warning on situations of interest.
The US Department of Defense for example has Malicious codes that hit social media could be
created a dedicated web portal to provide any kind grouped into the following categories:
of information related to the use of Social Media
for militaries and, more in general, for any citizens • Social network account-stealing malware
who desire to better understand these platforms. propose fake authentication forms for cyber spying
purposes. In many cases, so simple a schema is
Data mining in social media enough for gathering account credentials and
other personal information such as e-mail info and
The data mining of social media is an phone numbers.
activity often conducted by intelligence circles • Binary/scripting malware on 3rd party
and militias. Many free services can help military web-sites for distribution of targeted malware
analysts to see trends in different countries for are like backdoors through the vulnerabilities in
specific events and news, like protests and social internet browser plugins.
movements. Everything on the Internet could be Both categories are very common and largely
subject to data mining practices and social networks used by cyber criminals, but they could also
represent a relevant portion of data circulating on be implemented by groups of state-sponsored
the web, making them sources of great interest for hackers to infect large number of machines.
any kind of analysis. Social media in many cases
not only provide raw data for investigation, but The most popular example of social
also relationships between subsets of information, malware that could be analyzed to understand the
simplifying mining activities. schema of attack on a social network is Koobface, a
multi-platform malware that targeted users of the
The military to analyze data with so called social networking websites Facebook, MySpace
prediction by mining big data collected from and Twitter. Koobface propagates through
multiple open sources including social media. This popular social networking sites by spamming the
Governments are mainly attracted by could be very useful for intelligence gathering and
social media due to the possibility of being able to prediction.
support military operations such as:
Malware-based cyber attacks
a. Psychological Operations
b. Cyber espionage Malware authors are very interested on
c. Offensive purposes the use of social media platforms mainly because
they could spread malicious code to a wide
Using social media militias could enable a audience who have low awareness on principal
cyber-offensive act against foreign governments. cyber threats. In a military context, the use of
Let’s say, for example, a cyber-espionage campaign social media could allow attackers to recruit a
for the diffusion of specific crafted malware, but large number of bots to conduct a successful
with powerful social platforms, this could also offensive against critical targets (e.g. critical
be used to influence the global sentiment of a infrastructures). Another advantage in exploiting
population in countries feeding such dissent social media platforms is the possibility to target
against the central authorities. Another alternative groups of individuals of a selected community who
use of social network is for propaganda to spread a share particular attitudes and habits, typically for
religion or an ideology widely and efficiently. cyber espionage purposes. According to the IBM
X-Force 2012 Mid-year Trend and Risk Report,
Many governments are promoting the social networks have been the dominant targets of
growth of internal cyber units composed by email phishing for more than two years, and drive-
specialists who analyze in real time the principal by downloads are becoming the principal method
source of interest to monitor a global situation of infection. In the last couple of years, specially
from cyber space, like a cyber-eye on the real crafted malware have been spread through social
world. These teams are also working on the media allowing large scale attacks as well as APT
definition of a new generation of instruments that attacks. Social network platforms have been used
could be used for real time analysis of so large a for bot recruiting and also for hiding the command
quantity of information with the specific intent of and control infrastructure and related traffic.
providing early warning on situations of interest.
The US Department of Defense for example has Malicious codes that hit social media could be
created a dedicated web portal to provide any kind grouped into the following categories:
of information related to the use of Social Media
for militaries and, more in general, for any citizens • Social network account-stealing malware
who desire to better understand these platforms. propose fake authentication forms for cyber spying
purposes. In many cases, so simple a schema is
Data mining in social media enough for gathering account credentials and
other personal information such as e-mail info and
The data mining of social media is an phone numbers.
activity often conducted by intelligence circles • Binary/scripting malware on 3rd party
and militias. Many free services can help military web-sites for distribution of targeted malware
analysts to see trends in different countries for are like backdoors through the vulnerabilities in
specific events and news, like protests and social internet browser plugins.
movements. Everything on the Internet could be Both categories are very common and largely
subject to data mining practices and social networks used by cyber criminals, but they could also
represent a relevant portion of data circulating on be implemented by groups of state-sponsored
the web, making them sources of great interest for hackers to infect large number of machines.
any kind of analysis. Social media in many cases
not only provide raw data for investigation, but The most popular example of social
also relationships between subsets of information, malware that could be analyzed to understand the
simplifying mining activities. schema of attack on a social network is Koobface, a
multi-platform malware that targeted users of the
The military to analyze data with so called social networking websites Facebook, MySpace
prediction by mining big data collected from and Twitter. Koobface propagates through
multiple open sources including social media. This popular social networking sites by spamming the
