In the security industry, we’re sometimes over-ready to be over-prescriptive, seeing security and privacy concerns as paramount where others see them as a distraction. And we’ve become used to the mindset that computer users will always prefer convenience to security.

The survey asked just two questions:
1.Does your organization have a formal/written social media acceptable use policy?
2.What level of access does your organization allow to each of the follwoing social media sites: Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn, Blogs, and Other?

Since the feed will be public and historic, there is a potential to research trends over the timeline, particularly as twitter is being used for more command and control functionality. As soon as it becomes available, we’ll follow up. :)

[Update: Alex Matrosov has posted screenshots of the Twebot update at http://twitpic.com/1ousmx and http://twitpic.com/1ouse5.] Juraj Malcho, the Head of our Lab in Bratislava, reports that there have been further developments regarding the tool for creating Twitter-controlled bots described by Jorge Mieres and Sebastián Bortnik, Security Analysts at ESET Latin America, in an earlier blog at http://www.eset.com/blog/2010/05/14/botnet-for-twits-applications-for-dummies.

Our colleagues in ESET Latin America have just blogged about an interesting botnet creation tool: the original blog is at http://blogs.eset-la.com/laboratorio/2010/05/14/botnet-a-traves-twitter/, by Jorge Mieres and Sebastián Bortnik, Security Analysts. (Mistakes in interpretation are, as usual, down to me!) In the last years we have seen many security incidents driven by botnets and exploiting the technologies

If you regularly follow my blogs, you'll know that while this my primary blogspot, it isn't the only site to which I post (see signature for full details). Here are a few recent blogs and microblogs that may be of possible interest. @Mophiee asked me about the ICPP Trojan on Twitter (where I'm @ESETblog or

[Update: it's likely that the attacks described below will also take advantage of the more recent bombings in Dagestan, as described by the BBC here. Isn't it bad enough that horrors like this take place at all, let alone provide revenue for cybercriminals?] Late last  night (30th March) I added a pointer to my earlier

Yesterday I recorded a podcast for The Malware Report with guest Ira Victor of Data Clone Labs Inc. Ira also co-hosts the radio show “The Cyber Jungle” which you can find at www.thecyberjungle.com. The podcast should be up in the next week or so. During the show Ira mentioned the website http://www.PleaseRobMe.com. This site takes

We seem to have pointed out rather often recently that giving away lots of information on Facebook, Twitter and other social network sites isn't a good idea. PleaseRobMe claims, somewhat amusingly, to be a resource for burglars, saving them the trouble of searching through Twitter and Foursquare for information on whose house is currently unoccupied. In

[Part 6 of an occasional series, updating a blog series I ran in early 2009 to reflect changes in the threat landscape. This series will also be available shortly as a white paper.] Social Networks Can Be Very Anti-Social Don’t disclose sensitive information on websites like FaceBook or LinkedIn if you can’t be sure that you