- - Crooks' Bots Swarm Facebook and MySpace Scams and identity-theft programs that attack email accounts and users of social-networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace have become a new front in cybercrime. To carry out many of these automated attacks, cybercriminals first must overcome "captchas," the distorted letters and characters that users of an email or social-networking account are required to type to complete certain online forms. For years, captchas have helped to stop or bog down automated programs aimed at creating email accounts that promote scams such as fake computer virus protection and bogus accounts on social Web sites that can be used to collect personal information on legitimate users. Security specialists say a growing number of captcha-breaking groups are using real people to type in captcha responses for cybergangs around the world. This is allowing the gangs to create fake email and social-network accounts by the tens of thousands - and use them as the starting point for a variety of cyberscams spread by email and instant messages. MySpace and Facebook say that, so far, they have kept such attacks largely in check. But as long as captchas are a key security feature on networking Web sites, cyberattacks on such sites are likely to intensify.
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http://www.tennessean.com/article/20090423/NEWS08/904230346/1025
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