Marines Ban Facebook, MySpace

The U.S. Marine Corps has slapped an immediate ban on the use of social networking sites on its network, warning that sites like Facebook, MySpace and Twitter are a “proven haven for malicious hackers and content.”

The ban, contained in an order issued Monday, will last for a year. It specifically mentions Facebook, Twitter and MySpace although it applies to what is described as “Web-based services that allows communities of people to share common interests.”

A few choice quotes from the Marine Corps order:
“These internet sites in general are a proven haven for malicious actors and content and are particularly high risk due to information exposure, user generated content and targeting by adversaries…”

“The very nature of SNS [social network sites] creates a larger attack and exploitation window, exposes unnecessary information to adversaries and provides an easy conduit for information leakage that puts OPSEC [operational security], COMSEC [communications security], [and] personnel… at an elevated risk of compromise.”

CNN reports that the ban was drawn up in response to a late July warning from U.S. Strategic Command, which told the rest of the military it was considering a Defense Department-wide ban on the Web 2.0 sites, due to network security concerns.

Facebook, MySpace and Twitter have been constant targets for malware attacks that exploit the trusted nature of social networks to lure users into clicking on links to malicious sites.

This post contains excerpts from the CNN article, Marines ban Twitter, Facebook and other sites, by Noah Shactman, August 4th, 2009, and the ZDNet article, U.S. Marines ban Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, by Bryan Naraine, August 4th, 2009.