ONLINE thieves are turning to social networking sites in a new form of identity fraud.

Internet expert Dr Mark Gregory from RMIT University said thousands of Victorians could be at risk as cyber criminals impersonate genuine Facebook and My Space users to carry out money scams.

``The fraudsters use viruses to collect account details for social networking sites,'' Dr Gregory, program leader for Network Engineering at RMIT's School of Electrical and Computer Engineering. said.

``They then impersonate people and contact friends asking for money. People believe they are being contacted by someone they actually know. It works in a different way from email scams, because the level of trust is already there.''

Posted by Justin Payton in Adware, Spyware and Trojans at 14:15

WASHINGTON — The White House computer system was penetrated numerous times by Chinese hackers, the Financial Times reported Friday.

The cyber attackers obtained e-mails between government officials and stole information before U.S. computer experts fixed the system, a senior U.S. official told the Financial Times.

U.S. government cyber intelligence experts suspect the attacks were sponsored by the Chinese government because of their targeted nature. They added that it is difficult to trace the exact source of an attack beyond a server in a particular country.

Posted by Justin Payton in Adware, Spyware and Trojans at 11:23