Hackers Earning Huge Amounts from Stolen Twitter Accounts

There is nothing new about hackers reselling the stolen usernames and passwords, but the researchers at the antivirus firm 'Kaspersky Lab' have recently highlighted that stolen Twitter account details are sold at much higher price than other credentials among cyber crooks.

Dmitry Bestuzhev, Security Researcher at Kaspersky, has claimed that he has noticed MSN accounts selling at $1.40. He has also mentioned that the price for Twitter accounts is indeed very high, as per the reports by VentureBeat on January 29, 2010.

The popularity of Twitter accounts could be attributed to the fact that they provide hackers a platform to circulate their trojans to numerous users at once. The price of Twitter accounts depends on the number of followers. Bestuzhev claimed that one Twitter account, with around 320 followers, was sold at $1,000 on underground hacker forum, as per the reports by ComputerWorld on January 29, 2010.

Further, it is reported that the account sold at $1,000 had an easy three letters username, perhaps making it more helpful for attackers to break in the account.

The prime reason for intense interest of cyber criminals in infiltrated account details is easy access to accounts for propagating their malicious programs. Hackers are seeking an initial, authentic platform from which they can send harmful Twitter messages and attack more systems.

Other security experts have said that it is not a big surprise that Twitter accounts are valued so high. It is a kind of communication between instant messaging and mail, both of which have been greatly used to circulate malware.

The security experts have further said that Twitter users are taught to click on links from the people they follow, and they perhaps are not as careful as they would to a doubtful link in a mail or IM message.

In addition, the security experts stated that huge revenues generation from the stolen data make computer viruses and hacking programs famous among cyber crooks. Besides Twitter accounts, Gmail accounts were also put on sale on Russian hacker forums at a price rate of 2,500 Roubles or $82) RapidShare accounts put on sale at $5 per month along with instant messaging, Skype and Facebook details on the forums.

Related article: Hackers Redirect Windows Live Search to Malicious Sites

» SPAMfighter News - 06-02-2010

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