cyberattack targets iPhone, Facebook, Foursquare in 2011

According to a report released Wednesday by McAfee, Malicious coders and all-out cybercrooks will target newer and hipper forms of digital communication in 2011.
Here's a quick look at some of the types of threats it highlights:
Location services
Foursquare, Gowalla and Facebook Places,which let mobile phone users alert their friends to their current whereabouts,pose an increasing security threat, the report says. Location-tagged Twitter posts are also a worry.

Social media
This is kind of a no-brainer. If criminals know lots of stuff about you from social media posts and profiles, they can use that information to try to trick you into trusting potential scammers. Security geeks call this "spear phishing."

URL shorteners
These sites,like bit.ly, is.gd and tinyurl.com,take long internet addresses and shorten them so that they are easier to send via e-mail, text or Twitter.
But with convenience comes risk, the report says.
"The trouble,and abuse,follows because users do not know where these shortened links actually lead until they click them. This is a huge opportunity for abuse," McAfee says.

Smartphones
There haven't been many cases of cyberattacks on smartphones.
But McAfee says that's about to change.
"McAfee Labs predicts that 2011 will be a turning point for threats to mobile devices," the report says, adding: "The widespread adoption of mobile devices into business environments combined with these and other attacks is likely to bring about the explosion we've long anticipated."

Apple operating systems
If you know an Apple-head, you've probably heard him or her say something to this effect: "My Mac NEVER gets bugs or viruses."
"The popularity of iPads and iPhones in business environments and the easy portability of malicious code between them could put many users and businesses at risk next year and beyond," the report says."
"The lack of user understanding regarding exposure on these platforms and the lack of deployed security solutions make a fertile landscape for cyber criminals. McAfee Labs expects to see botnets and Trojans (types of cyber attacks and viruses) move from a rare encounter to a more common occurrence on Apple platforms in 2011."

Hacktivism
"Hacktivists" are internet activists who shut down websites and cause other digital trouble to make a political point. The most recent high-profile example of this was the WikiLeaks saga, when hacktivists shut down credit-card websites as a show of support for that document-leaking website.
Hacktivism is at least a decade old. But it will continue to be prevalent in 2011, McAfee says, partly because of the attention WikiLeaks has drawn to the activity.

Source: cnn.com