Stories by: Joan Goodchild

Social engineers, or "human hackers", have been duping victims from the very beginning of human existence. Here are nine infamous con artists who made history with their scams and schemes.

As a research scientist for Barracuda networks, Daniel Peck has spent much of his time in the last year looking at activity on social networks and analyzing the common tactics used to scam, phish and otherwise trick people into clicking on bad links. A break down of the malicious activity on social networks can be found in By the numbers: How dangerous are Facebook, Twitter, search results (really)?

A scam that has been making its way around Twitter for some time has resurfaced recently and promises to increase a user's followers, but really gives control of one's account to a questionable third party.

Boston-based Bay Cove Human Services is a non-profit organization that offers assistance and service to 4,000 people and families in Massachusetts. CIO Hilary Croach has several technology challenges to contend with. For starters, the agency has its hands in a number of service areas, including helping individuals with developmental disabilities, mental illness, drug and alcohol addiction, and those who need support with aging. With about 140 locations around Eastern Massachusetts, Bay Cove's employees and IT operations are scattered.

Malware creators are already using the news of Osama Bin Laden's death as a opportunity to try and dupe people into clicking on malicious links. According to cloud-security firm Zscaler, researchers were already seeing malicious sites emerge to capitalize on the news within hours of the announcement.

My colleague, Bill Brenner, has a t-shirt he likes to wear that basically says social networking feeds the darker sides of human nature. The shirt is a parody of a Venn Diagram and shows the relationship between sites like Facebook and Twitter to what some might called undesirable character traits, such as ADHD, stalking and narcissism.

Many of us watch the events in the Middle East and North Africa unfold from afar. But for businesses with operations in these global regions of political unrest, protests, rebel uprising and deteriorating security often force difficult and immediate decisions for the sake of keeping

Published figures estimating the size and scope of botnets are often inaccurate and do not reflect the threat these compromised networks pose to security, according to research released this week by ENISA, the European Network and Information Security Agency.

In its recent annual security report, Cisco predicted VOIP abuse as a potential area for cyber crime growth.

The biggest mobile infection threat isn't malware that specifically targets mobile devices, according to new research from security firm BitDefender. Malware that targets Facebook is a far bigger problem for mobile security, the firm claims.