Viruses/Worms News

Twitter phishing results in scareware spam

Tuesday, June 2, 2009

Web security researchers from Kapersky have identified spam on Twitter that appears to be the second stage of an earlier phishing attack on the social networking site.

The phished accounts were used last Saturday to send out messages or tweets that directed Twitter users to go to a YouTube spoof site to see a "best video." Users who visited the site could have had their PCs infected through vulnerable versions of Adobe Reader.

Those users would then be warned that their computer had been infected with a phony virus in order to get them to purchase a fake anti virus program called "System Security."

It's a common attack used by cybercriminals to make money by selling fake anti virus products called scareware or rogueware.

However, researchers said the attack could signal an onslaught of spam attacks on Twitter similar to those experienced on Facebook and MySpace.

Twitter's security team wasn't letting on that anything serious could be amiss. In a Twitter status update on the site on Saturday, the company told users not to visit any juste.ru domains. The company closed down previously hacked accounts for clean-up.

Later on Saturday, Twitter said "everyone should be squeaky clean! No personal information was compromised as a result of this attack."
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