"Reports suggest that Tony Blair's Faith Foundation Facebook page has been defaced with references to Martin Sheen, the actor who played the US President in the TV drama The West Wing," said Richard Kirk, Fortify's European director.
 
"The fact that his page was hackable, however, highlights the need to include code auditing in the software development process, something that whoever created the Facebook application used by the Faith Foundation appears to have overlooked," he remarked.
 
Due to the abundance of hacking activity on web portals, Kirk stresses the need for any company planning to show its pages on the internet – including most firms – to be careful when code auditing the pages as well as any applications used.

This is especially important for Web 2.0. services such as Facebook, says Kirk, where the extensible nature of the internet environment allows users to programme their own applets.

"We have reached the stage where interactivity is king on the internet, but it also brings with it the potentially serious problem of IT security. Web 2.0 significantly changes the security paradigm," he said.
 
"Anyone coding software that includes any element of internet interaction, and not just Web 2.0 environments, needs to be aware of the risks, and the fact that hackers are every bit as code-savvy as they are, if not more so," he added.