Hackers Target Micro-blogging Website Twitter

With Facebook and Twitter attacked frequently by the hackers, social networking has become quite harmful. As per the research report by Kaspersky Laboratories, hackers have now started to use micro-blogging website Twitter to regulate and send commands to zombie systems infected by malware or virus, as per the news by DNA on May 31, 2010.

A senior official of the firm, David Jacoby, says that a hacker tool known as TwitterNET Builder, which is employed to make zombie systems or botnets, is circulated through many well known social networking sites, as per the news by DNA on May 31, 2010.

The mail may appear with some eye-catching subject lines such as 'twitterdownloader', which most of the web users are familiar with.

Kaspersky Lab has revealed that presently, two variants of TwitterNET Builder are circulating on the Net. The first one uses unsafe commands with unchanged names, while the second variant enables the users to modify the command names, making it tougher to recognize the Twitter accounts used for controlling the botnets.

All it takes is just a few clicks to make harmful code, which is capable to transform infected systems into zombies. These zombies after joining together create a botnet. As a result, this type of botnets are put to common uses such as launching DDoS attacks, circulating spam, etc.

The security experts state that in this manner, the hackers will make a group of several systems acting on their commands without the knowledge of the owner.

In a study report, Director of Kaspersky Lab's global research and analysis team, Costin Raiu, states that since the mid of March 2010, the attack to capture Twitter credential and the display of harmful links have risen considerably. He has added that they have seen some more schemes conceptualized to earn money from the stolen data, as per the news by mydigitalfc on May 31, 2010.

In the third week of May 2010, similar case was also reported by the Sunbelt security experts.

Related article: Hackers Redirect Windows Live Search to Malicious Sites

» SPAMfighter News - 6/8/2010