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Social networking sites are likely to become an increasingly attractive target for fraudsters, experts have warned.

The turn of the new year is expected to see the popularity of social networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook continue.

However, IT security analysts say the proliferation of personal details and the availability of information on people’s date of birth, interests and phone numbers could be a way in for unscrupulous hackers.

ScanSafe has forecast that 2008 will see Web 2.0 threats top the list of the biggest security worries.

“The explosion in popularity of Web 2.0 applications has made Web 2.0 sites an increasingly rich target for cyber criminals,” the firm declared in its evaluation of the coming year.

Mary Landesman, senior security researcher at the firm, told the BBC the nature of the medium meant it could be targeted.

“The technologies that play there and the third party add-ons make it an environment that is susceptible to compromise,” she explained.

Cybercrime is said to be an industry worth more than $100 billion a year.

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Trojan malware has been found to be controlling Google ad space by sending users to different websites when they try to click on the search engine’s advertisements.

Romanian-based online security firm BitDefender found the hidden software, Trojan.Qhost.WU, and said that the threat could have a negative impact on both users and businesses.

Attila-Mihaly Balazs, a BitDefender virus analyst, said that users are prone to clicking on links or ads that “may contain malicious code”, while he said webmasters are affected because their valuable ad space is stolen by a third-party vendor and are used to promote someone else’s website.

An anonymous hacker who told siliconrepublic.com about how the malware could be operating said “most anti-virus” programs should pick up on the problem if “if an attempt was made to modify the host file anyway”.

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Amateur animators will now be able to use software that the production teams from the sets of The Lord of the Rings trilogies and the Chronicles of Narnia have used for free.

Antics Technologies has released a downloadable version of its realtime animation software Antics V3 that will allow users to create characters and sets in an easy to use, point-and-click format.

Alastair Woolley, managing director of Antics, said that with “simple techniques like drag-and-drop and a simple user interface, anyone with a story to tell or an interest in filmmaking can now bring their ideas to life in real time.”

Users will still have access to the more complicated actions involving special scenes and camera angles that will allow “cameras to view the action from whatever angle and positions you want”, he added.

The free version of the software has a library of scenes and characters including everything from a Wild West scene to a modern city landscape and for an additional fee, enthusiasts can purchase more scenes, import third party animations and share content with other users in an open forum.

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