Cybercrime on the Social Networking Bandwagon

   After releasing version 9 of its Security Intelligence Report, Microsoft revealed the number and prominent geographical locations of the botnet-infected computers it detected.  Most notable among the results is the fact that 2.2 million, or one third of all detected infected computers were found to be in the United States.  Even more interesting is the shift in the medium that the infection uses to spread.  In the same report, Microsoft reports that there is a decline in the spread of popular botnet malwares Rimecud, Alureon, and Hamweq in favor of a malware  called Pushbot that uses MSN, AIM and Yahoo Messenger to spread.  With the decline of the use of email and the rise of instant messaging it only makes sense that this trend would arise.  It would seem as though even cyber-crime is hoping onto the social networking bandwagon but in reality they have been there all along.
   Speaking of social networking, it was only a matter of time before they found a way to spread botnet malware via Facebook,  thankfully it was a group of researchers.  (see enclosure link) In 2008 they successfully created an app for Facebook that once installed, loaded the users computer with malware that would make it part of the botnet army and allow the bot herder to use it initiate denial of service attacks.  If it was possible then, someone is doing it now.  Therefore it would be prudent to not accept friend requests from people you do not know and only install apps from established companies.  What if Facebook was created for just this purpose all along?  Nahhhh that can't be...