It also may be cybercrook space. Sites like Santa Monica-based MySpace.com use the very popular Ajax coding to manipulate pages. It turns out that Ajax can be rejiggered in lots of unpleasant ways. (Just Google it and you'll come across all kinds of "how to hack" sites.) Last year, the Samy worm was used to infect a million MySpace users. It took a day to clean up the mess. At a cybersecurity conference in Las Vegas, the matter of how to defend against Ajax hacking drew large audiences.

Dave Cole, director of Symantec Security Response (SYMC), says social networking sites suggest a false sense of security: "You don't expect to be attacked when you go to Joe Bob's page."

Hemanshu Nigam, MySpace's chief security officer, said in a statement that the company uses strong security measures and works with law enforcement in the event of a breach. Since Ajax is well on its way to becoming a standard for the way interactive Web pages operate, security experts expect attacks to escalate.