Twitter Destroys 2nd Pc Worm During Same Week

According to Sophos a security company, Twitter, for the second time in a week, destroyed a PC worm during the fourth weekend of September 2010 after the worm propagated porn tweets.

Describing the new assault, Sophos says that the PC virus entices site visitors with the caption "WTF" that is also accompanied with a harmful web-link. If this link is hit, users are led onto an empty web-page, which is laden with malware manipulating a XSRF (cross-site request forgery) bug. Subsequently, the malicious software automatically dispatches offensive short messages called tweets in a manner that seems as though the account of the infected user has sent them.

Outlines the security company that it isn't the destruction caused that's fascinating about this attack, but the manner in which along with Twitter users, the Internet as a whole tackled it. In only a few hours since the attack started, prominent news sources, for instance, the Tech Blog of Guardian warned Twitter members about the exploit, urging them for avoiding Twitter.com while rather work on a Twitter client that did not contain malware.

As a result, users of Twitter crowded on the micro-blogging site as they tried to know the crux of the mystery, but became victimized with the attack. Notably, among all those who became infected, Robert Scoble the Technology Blogger was one.

Remarking about this assault, Senior Technology Consultant Graham Cluley at U.K situated Sophos stated via a blog that the attack proliferated with such great speed possibly because people became too inquisitive about the web-link that merely had the label "WTF." Crn.com published this on September 27, 2010.

Cluley, while stating that the exploit seemed only mischievous, added that hackers could have conveniently abused the Twitter vulnerability for propagation of malware. Zdnet.co.uk reported this on September 27, 2010.

Meanwhile Twitter notified via its blog that it had shut down the web-link as well as was cleaning off the vulgar tweets. Nevertheless, there was a clear security issue on Twitter.com consequent of the attack that had to be urgently addressed failing which users could have additional, probably more perilous assaults later, Twitter concluded.

Related article: Twitter Flaw Compels Victims to Follow Hacker’s Account

» SPAMfighter News - 10/4/2010