How vulnerable are Web 2.0 applications to hackers and cyber crooks?

It's a question worth considering. Web 2.0 is designed to maximise participation, information sharing and collaboration. Web 2.0's user-generated content encourages and helps develop users' creativity. Apart from Wikipedia, Web 2.0 applications also include eBay, Craiglist, Facebook, YouTube, Flickr, and blogs, all part of the generation of online applications and services offering user-generated content, customized Web pages, or social networking, or maybe a combination of all three. All of these applications thrive by offering new ways for people to engage with one another. And it's not just the geeks and early adopters who are using it. The construction and applications are farmed out to volunteers around the world. The technology is so widespread and ubiquitous that it belongs to everybody.

And therein lies the problem according to this news report.

The system provides open access to hackers who can use networking to spread malware and crack into systems because Web sites such as Wikipedia thrive on people adding content. Trouble is the organizations that host these and other social media sites are not policing the content as that is a very non-Web 2.0 thing to do. Furthermore, most companies are unaware when their employees are visiting Web 2.0 sites.

The report offers a number of possible solution but it's hard to see any of that taking off. Organizations, as a rule, tend to shy away from having too many layers of defense.