Social networks like Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter have fundamentally changed the way we conduct business and interact with each other, but they have also created a new type of criminal enterprise. With over 2 billion users on Facebook alone, social media networks have provided Cyberwarriors with a cornucopia of personal information to draw on. A cyber warrior is defined as a computer expert engaged in the infiltration or sabotage of information systems, or in the defense of information systems from external attacks, typically for strategic or military purposes. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay Given this definition, the term cyber warrior can take on different meanings depending on the context in which it is used. This term can refer to someone with malicious intent such as a hacker or it could be a professional who works to defend against such attackers. With so many social media networks available in today's digital age, a cyber warrior has a good amount of options to choose from. As of 2017, there are 2 billion monthly active users on Facebook and over 1 billion daily active users allowing the use of information from accounts such as names, dates of birth, places of work, addresses and even current locations. LinkedIn is a professional network that registered 128 million Americans on the site in 2016, while India came in second place with 35 million members. In third place, Brazil came in with 25 million registered members while other smaller countries reached around 1 million users. The networking site allows members to create profiles and make connections with others as a way to establish professional relationships. Instagram and Twitter are also known networks that cyber warriors turn to to gather information. Cybercrime on social networks can be classified in three ways. The first large-scale, traditional scams try to trick you into clicking something or visiting pages that place malware on your computer. The second and less obvious would be for the criminal to recklessly try to publicly expose personal data and ultimately use social media to exchange ideas, connect and exchange stolen information. In the context of cybercriminals, the interconnectivity of social media creates ideal conditions for cyber warriors seeking a specific target to gather information about an individual or company. Most users now own multiple devices such as computers, iPads, iPods and smartphones, which communicate and share information within our personal networks and any of these can easily be overlooked from a security perspective. The characteristic of human trust that leads many individuals or employees to fall prey to scams or malvertising campaigns is what most cyber criminals bet on. Most social media users simply don't realize how much information they share through their accounts or the implications of the information they share. Password questions like "what was the model of your first car" or "what was the name of your first pet" can be discovered by doing a little digging through a social media account's old posts or simply tapping the "About" tab " on your account. Facebook page. Geotags are another feature that most users are unfamiliar with and don't even know exists. Geotags are embedded in photos and videos taken with GPS-equipped smartphones and digital cameras and can be left on smartphones, which today constantly transmitFacebook streaming and real-time locations. Businesses are also connected to Facebook and Twitter via the networks they use to launch these accounts, not to mention the public Wi-Fi these businesses can offer. Cybercriminals can use the information they collect from these targets' social media accounts to fake familiarity. Individuals with particular job functions can be located and identified with just a few clicks. Once their social connections are identified as "stalked" they can be mapped to develop alarmingly detailed graphs showing shared posts, individual interests, recent trips to conferences or any other pertinent information at the end of the game. Once this information is gathered, cyber criminals have everything they need to craft emails with enough detail to be convincing. Criminals who want to spread targeted malware or ransomware are launching more detailed attacks with carefully worded emails, regularly tricking staff into making suspicious transfers or opening malicious attachments which can result in ransomware blocking, local malware infection or completely disabling the network.One The employed tactic using data collected on social networks is called a “whaling” attack, in which the criminal spoofs the sender's name and email, as well as mentions a recent experience shared, possibly from a social media post to reduce skepticism, and fabricates a story about the need to urgently perform a bank transfer. The same can be used to trust individuals' personal emails rather than just corporate networks. In terms of cybersecurity, professional ethical hackers from FireEye's Mandiant Red Team Operations tested this theory and bombarded a client organization with a carefully worded email. The results showed that 400 out of 600 employees clicked on the attachment. If a cyber warrior wants to investigate a particular individual's work habits or what company and position they are in, or who they are connected to professionally and privately, this information can often be easily tracked down on social media. Attacks on a specific individual become much easier if the victim has made a lot of private information publicly available on their profiles. Recent data from the US FBI suggests that fraudulent emails, sent by cyber criminals posing as CEOs and other key executives, are costing US companies $2.4 billion. 3 billion between October 2013 and February 2016, during which time the FBI received approximately 17,642 reports of such scams. They found that 72% of attackers pretended to be the CEO and 35% of respondents posed as the CFO to target key financial executives and other executives. While in many cases the initial scam may simply be an attempt to target click on an email to open it, you can click on the initial malware and the next phase of the scam may begin. Another scam, one of the most profitable, is installing ransomware. Malicious software encrypts data on a target's computer and then demands payment before restoring the system to its original state. Once opened or clicked, the initial malware is used to create a backdoor into the victim's system. This may seem to serve no purpose, but the cyber warrior could use this backdoor in numerous advantageous ways. Now that the backdoor is available, the Cyberwarrior can install software that, for example, reads usernames and passwords or hijacks.