With the growth of social networking, the risks involved in using such platforms also followed suit.

Based on the study, the use of popular social networking websites has significantly increased in the past six month with Twitter leading at 250 percent growth and Facebook trailing behind with 192 percent increase.

Also, Facebook Chat took the fourth spot in the most common chat application found in the enterprise networks. Since its launching in April 2008, it has overtaken Yahoo Messenger and AIM.

Meanwhile, blogging and editing in Wikipedia has also increased their share with 39 percent growth. This led to the consumption of bandwidth increasing by 48 percent.

The survey was conducted to more than 200 organizations around the world, including those in the sectors of manufacturing, health care, government, retail, education, and financial service.

Palo Alto said that the survey is almost a hundred percent reliable since the data gathered were not from evaluation sheets answered by the respondents but from the actual network traffic assessment of the users. The study was conducted from March to September this year.

Palo Also warned that the growth of applications may one day affect the organizations’ networks, specially that new forms of risks almost always tag along new forms of applications.

Meanwhile, the research group pointed out that out of 255 Enterprise applications, around 70 percent has the capability to transfer files while 64 percent are identified to have vulnerable spots. On the other hand, 28 percent of the applications are identified to be virus-carrying or malware affected and more than 16 percent are capable of tunneling on other applications.

These malwares, which usually run in applications and hijack users’ personal accounts, include Koobface, Boface, and Fbaction.

The research firm had now advices employees and business managers to regularly check their networks to avoid future problems caused by the malwares.

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The online threat also appeared in MySpace, another popular social site in the US.  But compared to the severity of the attack, Facebook has been more targeted by this malware that experts are trying to figure out how to combat this threat.

According to experts, Facebook has become the popular choice of hackers and fraudsters because of its rising number of users worldwide.  To this date, at least three major computer viruses have been detected in the online community.

Meanwhile, security firm Trend Micro warned people from receiving unsolicited messages, adding that these can lead them to dummy websites that will urge them to enter their username and password.

According to a report by Technewsworld.com, there have been two fake applications that circulated Facebook few days after Koobface was detected.  These applications said “The Error Check System” and a warning “Facebook — closing down!!!” which left users confuse.

Trend Micro also said that other social sites were infected with the same malware including Hi5, Bebo, Friendster, and Myyearbook.  But because of the unrivaled popularity of Facebook, more computers are prone to the malware, the research firm added.

Earlier report said that Koobface has been designed to steal sensitive data of people and to detect search results of Internet users and their site visits.  Meanwhile, such information can be used by hackers and online criminals to break people’s online bank accounts or commit identity theft.

To protect the user accounts, experts warn people to be careful in opening unsolicited messages, saying that sites which require them to enter sensitive data such as password and username must be avoided.

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On Wednesday, McAfee Inc. posted on its company blog that the virus is making rounds in Facebook site by sending users with a message stating: “You look just awesome in this movie.”

If a person clicks the said message, another one will appear on the screen informing him/her that his Flash player is out dated.  After this warning, there will appear a downloadable file with a title flash_player.exe which is really a virus’ code which can infect the computer system of a user.

This virus, also known as a worm, imposed a great problem with the online community since its more than 120 million active members may be affected by the virus which is disguising as a safe program file for updating computers.

According to experts, the virus has the ability to steal search results made by Facebook members including their site visits to search engines including Yahoo, MSN, and Google.  They also said that this may also be used for fraudulent act and other online crime.

McAfee stated on its blog that dozens of Koobface variants are existing today, but its latest version was only spotted few weeks ago.

The software company also added that people should practice precautions in using computers, reiterating that Internet-users should not open unexpected email attachments even these are sent by someone they know.

Facebook representative Barry Schitt said that his company is continuously updating their security features to lessen the impact of the virus, adding that only a small number of users have their computers infected with Koobface.

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