ALERT – A new threat on Facebook that tricks a user to download spyware is the latest threat to show up on social networking sites such as Facebook and it raises an interesting dilemma for security practitioners. How should Facebook be treated when it comes to security policies: as a web site, as an application, or both? Clearly it is a web site but now that the "Facebook platform" features are available allowing applets, widgets and applications to be created for it, how will the security policy protect the network? Will a URL filtering policy block it? If the Applet is using port 80 then how will a firewall control it? These types of challenges are indicative of the evolution of the application landscape and the related threats that will no doubt increase in frequency and severity.
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