Would Sir Like Malware With His Meal?

Just when you thought it was safe to get back into the (digital) water, after ditching Window XP and upgrading your home or office PC, comes the news that hackers managed to get into an oil company's' systems through a Chinese takeaway menu!

Yes... you read correctly, this ingenious restaurant menu hack was the key to grabbing crucial company data.

How did they do it?  According to the report in the New York Times, "hackers infected with malware the online menu of a Chinese restaurant that was popular with employees. When the workers browsed the menu, they inadvertently downloaded code that gave the attackers a foothold in the business’s vast computer network".

This form of infiltration is referred to as watering hole attack.  Just as predatory crocodile lurks by a watering hole in the Masai Mara ready to pounce on a thirsty gazelle, so does this malware await its opportunity.

And no, before you ask, I doubt if Edward Snowden every set foot in this restaurant but it does go to prove just how clever and pervasive cybercrime has become.

Any system or device that uses software is now prone to these types of attack whether it be climate control systems, printers or even vending machines.  Once you can break into one device you have a pathway to break into an enterprises' entire system. I doubt if many people truly appreciate the sophistication and cunning of today's cyber criminals and spooks.

The NYT article also details that 23-70% of attacks dealt with by network security agencies emanate from third party devices.  It is also worth mentioning that many of the devices mentioned above such as vending machines (and surprisingly ATMs) still run of Windows XP and as of this month, Microsoft has ceased its support for this software leaving it even more vulnerable.

30% of the world's personal computers still run on Windows XP which represents a massive challenge to stopping the proliferation of malware.  If you have a spare £5.5m you can always do what the UK government has just done and buy yourself some extra breathing space.  But for most mere mortals such as yours truly, this was not an option.

The Year of the Mega Breach

Symantec's most recent Internet Security Report 2014 labelled 2013 as the Year of the Mega Breach as the  number of attacks were 62 percent greater than in 2012, with 253 total breaches. Eight of the breaches last year exposed more than 10 million identities each!

Source: Symantec Corporation - Internet Security Threat Report 2014.

Ransomware attacks, which as the same suggest hijack and lock a system until a ransom is paid, grew by 500% in 2013. Cryptolocker is the best known of this type of malware.

I have made a mental note to be more careful when selecting from a menu in a restaurant in the future. The 'Chef's Special' may not turn out to be quite what it seems at first glance.

Related articles

• Cyber criminals hacked ATMs in Europe by injecting malware through USB to break into it
• End of Windows XP support spells trouble for some
• Snowden documents: NSA infected computers with malware
• 5 Signs Your Android Smartphone Is Infected With Malware
• Prison Locker Ransomware, an upcoming malware threat in 2014
• Sophisticated Russian cyber criminal syndicate behind Neiman Marcus breach eluding US authorities

Why Your Brand Needs Facebook

Your Facebook site is the place that users like to interact with your brand, possibly even more so than your corporate web site.

Even though this survey from Lab42 has a small sample of 1,000 compared to the estimated 900 million Facebook users, its finding reinforce the need for a robust and well maintained Facebook page.

87% Like brands on Facebook and only 13% said they did not.  More importantly 82% felt that Facebook was great place to interact with brands and 35% of these folk felt that brands listened more to them on Facebook than elsewhere online.

Incentives remain the biggest motivation for people to follow brands on Facebook. Promotions, discounts and giveaways were the biggest motivation for 55% of respondents.  Printing off a coupon was the top way that people interact with a brand page on Facebook and 77% felt they had saved money by Liking a brand on Facebook.

Too many posts though will turn off your Followers and make them Unlike the brand page.

However the news is not all good as some products have an uphill battle to get Likes.  Adult novelty items, diet and weight loss products all are causes for embarrassment and the reason people are reticent about being associated with a brand that produces these.  Perhaps somewhat surprisingly, Health and Wellness products rank third on the 'Like Embarrassment' scale.

On Pinterest

Gauri Sharma, the CEO of Lab42 says of the survey: "We feel these insights alone will spur brands to re-evaluate and question the effectiveness of marketing tactics directed at their Facebook consumers, as the findings directly challenge the notion that more likes equals more customer loyalty. For example, 46 percent have liked a brand that they have no intention of buying from, and of those, 52 percent liked a brand just to get a free item. Forty-six percent said they like brands even if they can’t afford the brand’s products.

While there’s no definitive answer of how every single brand should interact with their Facebook consumers to maximize the use of time, money and resources, we feel strongly that we’ve only begun to scratch the surface in truly understanding why consumers like specific brands and if their display of ‘loyalty’ on Facebook translates to a higher lifetime value."

Going Down The 'Googla' - Bottom of the List For Sharing Stories

Google claims 170m Google+ users but other reports have said it is a ghost town, so what is the truth?

Findings released appear to confirm the latter – despite its large number of accounts the platform is bottom of the list of social network users’ favoured channels.

Social media agency Umpf analysed 100 random online entertainment, health, business, technology and general news stories and looked at how many times each story was shared by Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn and Twitter users.

The findings show Twitter as the most active social network for sharing stories, followed by Facebook in second, LinkedIn third and Google+ last:

1. For every 100million users of Twitter, 197.3 people were likely to share an online story
2. For every 100million users of Facebook, 41.8 people were likely to share an online story
3. For every 100million users of LinkedIn, 15.2 people were likely to share an online story
4. For every 100million users of Google+, 6.0 people were likely to share an online story

Whilst Google+ is the second largest of the four in terms of official users*, and despite it arguably being the best placed of all four to succeed – it was created by Google post-Twitter, post-Facebook and post-LinkedIn, and designed to be the most socially-integrated network (“Online sharing is awkward. Even broken. And we aim to fix it.”) – it performs the worst.

Jon Priestley, of PR and Social Media agency Umpf, said: “Our findings clearly show a gulf between Google+ user numbers and their willingness to share online content, particularly when compared to rival platforms such as Facebook and Twitter".

How People Choose To Spend Their Time Online

More than half of all social network users spy on their partners according to the statistics recently released by Go-Gulf.com.

The heaviest users of online shopping are the Chinese who spend the maximum time of more than 5 hours per week.

Brazilians are amongst the most sociable with averaging 480 friends per user and the Japanese are at the other end of the spectrum with an average of only 29.

Hate To Say I Told You So, But I Told You So

Late in 2011 I predicted the steady decline of  Internet Explorer as the browser of choice. Confirmation this month based on StatCounter global statistics that this has now happened. And it should be noted, unlike IE which comes pre-installed on 90% of the world's computers changing to Chrome is purely a personal choice.

 Source: Silicon Valley Insider

Firefox is also struggling to make any headway against Chrome. So unlike Google+ which is being cast aside by many, Google's browser seems to be grabbing increasing Market share.

Related articles

• StatCounter: Google Chrome Pushes Past Microsoft's Internet Explorer (Again) (techcrunch.com)
• Chrome now world's top browser, but beware the math (news.cnet.com)

Why Pinning Is In Your Best Interest

Source: Experian

Those of us who are early adopters of Pinterest will have noticed a dramatic rise in activity from this social media channel in recent months.  As the above chart from a recent Experian study shows, Pinterest has clearly captured the interest of global users and no doubt the developers GooglePlus are looking at this surge with some envy.

Pinterest has leapfrogged Google Plus and is now the third most popular social networking site behind Facebook and Twitter. There were 11.7 million visitors to the site in January of 2012.

It is in the top ten websites for Hitwise's Social Networking and Forums category and from January to February of this year its growth grew a whopping 50%.  Not a bad result for a platform that only started in March of 2010.

As Experian points out, this growth is part of a much wider societal trend. "Users are increasingly more comfortable with recommendations from friends or other users when they come through social personalisation".

The shift in social media is away from just linking with friends and more towards common interests.  This means that brands and retailers need to carfeully consider what boards they will deploy and what products or images they will pin.

Choosing a category that can be associated with your company's products and service, but is not necessarily produced by the company can be challenging but is not insurmountable. A provider of IT services and solutions might might choose to pin 'Gadgets as in the example here. Gadgets are one of the more shareable items on Pinterest.

The second thing to remember is that any image you choose to pin or share needs to be of quality and immediate visual appeal. Close-ups rather than distant images, good colour rendition and optimisation should all be considered when selecting.

If you pin 'quality' you will be associated with it and vice versa. And be positive in your comments section, making sure that you use the edit function for each image once you have pinned it to link back to where you want the viewer to go. Always credit your image sources.

When using Pinterest for marketing purposes it should also be remembered that:

• Women use it to a far greater degree than men (68.2% of users are women - other studies put this figure as high as 80%). 
• 50% of users have children
• Home décor, crafts, fashion and food dominate the pin boards
• Users spend far longer on Pinterest than they do on most other social platforms  - 15.8 minutes, compared to Facebook (12.1 minutes) and Twitter (3.3. minutes).  Only YouTube captures interest longer (16.8 minutes)
• 25-34 is the dominant age demographic for Pinterest users
• 28% of users could be termed well off, with incomes over $US100,000.
• Sharing by re-pinning is by far the greatest activity rather than using a browser pin marklet.

Stats source: Modea

Remember that while Pinterest is a fast mover it still has a long, long way to go to make any headway against Facebook which will shortly reach 1 billion users and has 26.4% of all referral traffic (Pinterest, Google Plus and Twitter are all below 4%).

Finally here are some recent findings from Dan Zarella of Hubspot based on a data set of 11,000 pins. These can provide some guidance when you are aiming for maximum reach on Pinterest:

• Descriptions about 200 characters long are most re-pinnable
• Pins about food are very pinnable

  

• Aim to write "likable" content rather than "commentable" content for repins
• Taller images are more repinnable

Dan Zarella - Hubspot

Hubspot

 Related articles

• Experian: Pinterest is third most-visited social site
• Pinterest climbs to third most popular social network

Wrist Analysis - QR Code products

Here's a couple of products with similarities. Both seek to merge online with offline connections to create a visually appealing product; in this case the combination of a snazzy bracelet with QR Codes.

QR Living

Symbol - Cash Flow: Liking your work, not working to live

QRLiving connects you online through a wearable QR code and does so automatically;  not a word needs to be uttered by either party.

Whether this idea will kill the art of conversation stone dead is a moot point.  The downside of this adornment is that it requires the user to sign up to yet another network, rather than building on existing social profiles.

I am also not that keen on the rubbable symbols that adorn the side of each wrist band but maybe these are designed to appeal to a much younger market.

Skanz

By comparison, Skanz, while linking together QR codes with mobile technology, social media and fashion allows the wearer to make full use of Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+ social profiles.  As they put it "wearing the web".

They are also cleverer than their opposition, encouraging prospects to sign up as product Ambassadors.

The use of two dimensional codes is growing and QR Codes are being used by people in greater numbers.  A recent study by Forrester Research found that 5% of adults use 2D codes compared to 1% the previous year.

Forrester also found that too few eBusiness professionals use best practices to offer consumers good experiences once they've scanned a bar code.

Maybe part of that "good experience" could be to give away a free QR Code bracelet?

Related articles

• Study: More People Using QR Codes (mediabistro.com)
• Skanz Turns QR Codes Into 'Social Prints' (ypulse.com)

Share and Share Alike - 2011 Trends

The dominance of Facebook and the rise of Google's Chrome browser are two points of note in this infographic from AddThis.

The use of Google+ for sharing seems to have lost momentum since the initial enthusiasm of its roll out.

Sharing by mobile continues to grow and this trend will continue but Twitter is still the dominant sharing tool in Japan.  Twitter had a stellar year with a 600% rise in sharing.

Related articles

• AddThis sharing trends: infographic (econsultancy.com)
• How Did Firefox Fare in 2011? (Infographic) (readwriteweb.com)