Security Experts Warn Against New Trending Topic ‘Alan Turing’ Targeting Twitter

According to security experts, cyber criminals are using another trending topic 'Alan Turing' to spread malicious program on Twitter.

Turing, a famous British mathematician, computer scientist, logician and cryptanalyst, was born on June 23, 1912 and died on June 7, 1954.

As June 23, 2009 was the birthday of Turing, hackers created messages with topic 'Alan Turing' to attack Twitter users with malware. In fact, Twitter scammers became very active on that day (June 23, 2009) and used 'Alan Turing' to direct potential victims to myworlds.mp web domain.

Interestingly, the links used for redirection were modified by the famous bit.ly URL shortener and took followers to a site resembling a YouTube video.

However, the video was not real and directed users towards a site on the low.cc domain. This domain prompted users to install a file known as free-stream-player-v_125.exe. Actually, users were led to a website that seemed genuine YouTube site but it was not an authentic.

In fact, scams using the names of famous personalities to disseminate malware are repeatedly seen on social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter.

Scammers are coming up with extremely formulaic phishing scams to attack Facebook. In the third week of May 2009, scammers launched attacks against Facebook from a website "Areps.at." This scam performed the same function as other scams do - asking Facebook users to feed in their username and password.

Hence, security experts have advised computer users to follow the best line of defense. They suggested to avoid clicking on links sent by unknown users, do not install software if the user is unsure where it has come from and what it does. This implies that if user has slight suspicion on the authenticity of the application, he should not install it.

Security experts further said if user has already been using antimalware application, then he should ensure that it is properly updated with the latest definitions of malware.

At last, it is important for web surfers to remain cautious while working on social networking sites though they are on fun sites.

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» SPAMfighter News - 7/1/2009