Abstract: “Social networks are unequivocally the most used application for communication and information sharing in the 21st century. As growth of this technology increases, there is a need to implement a more secure authentication mechanism to protect users as well as the platform providers from various social engineering attacks. A recent study from LinkedIn and Twitter hacks shows that weak passwords and single factor authentication are still prevalent shortcomings facing most social networking sites. This end-user security lapse often paves way for phishing and malware attacks and undermines the overall integrity of the system.In this study, we review the rise of social networks and the underlying concepts of two factor authentication. Furthermore, we propose a novel, feasible, cost effective and secure technique of applying an email based password tokenization as a second factor authentication in social networking sites.”

Keywords: Authentication, Social Media Security, Tokenization, Renren, Sina Weibo