Online Attackers Utilize Twitter to Infect Visitors’ Computers

PandaLabs, an online security vendor, on June 3, 2009 reported of a fresh attack against users of Twitter. In this attack, a group of online attackers have set up a large number of Twitter accounts with a similarly massive number of comments published in them in connection with the subject "PhishTube broadcast" pertaining to Phish, the famous rock band.

Security experts at PandaLabs explain that by hacking Twitter accounts and posting comments in them, these online attackers are making sure that they are counted within the 'Trending Topics list,' leading to more visibility as well as to draw a greater traffic towards their comments.

In general, Twitter users have the 'Trending Topics list' within their interface. This list contains subjects that users of the network talk about the most. By clicking on any one of the links, results would appear in a series accompanied by comments as well as the names of users who posted the comments.

The PandaLabs researchers state that if Twitter users follow the link to 'PhishTube Broadcast' Trending Topic, they would find the malevolent comments that the cyber criminals posted in their accounts.

The comments include links that lead to a fake pornographic website, and if one clicks on its content, it would result in the infection of computer with the PrivacyCenter bogus antivirus, apparently an adware.

During the end week of June 2009, Twitter understandably came under an attack of 'scareware' distribution.

Sean-Paul Correll, a Security Researcher at PandaLabs, states that an interesting point to note is that online crooks have started to attack social-networking websites in an unprecedented number of incidences, as reported by securitypronews on June 3, 2009. According to Correll, in the current incidence, the crooks exploited the comments posting function of Twitter to merge the comments into the 'Trending Topics' so that they could successfully dupe unwitting users into following malevolent links.

Moreover, the researchers at PandaLabs also unearthed web-links that led to malicious sites ranking high among the Google searches.

Hence, PandaLabs suggest that users should use up-to-date antivirus software to scan their computers to deal with the cases of system compromise.

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» SPAMfighter News - 6/10/2009