Twitter suspends accounts of users infected by Koobface worm
Monday, July 13, 2009
Twitter on Friday said it was suspending user accounts that had been infected by a variant of the Koobface worm, which spreads itself by generating bogus tweets when the infected user logs in. The messages contain links to sites hosting the malware to infect other users.
Twitter said on its status blog Friday that the site was "suspending all accounts that we detect sending such bogus tweets."
Web security firm Trend Micro noticed a spike in Koobface activity on Twitter, saying on its security blog Friday that "a couple hundred" Twitter accounts were sending out the spam tweets over the span of a few hours.
Kapersky Labs, which detected the original Koobface worm last year spreading on Facebook and MySpace, said the number of variants had exploded from 324 to more than 1,000 at the end of June. The worm has been spreading on other social networking sites like Hi5, Bebo, Tagged, Netlog and, most recently, Twitter.
Comments and messages sent by the worm contain a link to a fake YouTube style website which invites users to download a phony Flash Player file that actually contains the worm.
"[T]he activity we've seen this month exceeds by far any other month in the past," said Stefan Tanase, a malware researcher at Kapersky.
Related News:
Conficker still a threat to web security - 3.18.2010
The Conficker worm was by far the most notorious piece of malware in 2009 for several reasons. Not only did it receive media attention and infect more computers than any other strain, according to Katonda, a business technology website, it reminded web security professionals of bygone days when major epidemics were the norm.
Network security update not responsible for crashes - 2.24.2010
Reports of the so-called "blue screen of death" following the installation of the latest Microsoft security update are the result of malware, not a defect in the update.
Botnets and Chuck Norris take aim at network security - 2.22.2010
Last week, word spread of the Kneber botnet compromising more than 2,000 computers worldwide. With the start of a new week comes more malware attacks plaguing the web community. The so-called "Chuck Norris" botnet is attacking routers and DSL modems by guessing commonly used passwords.
Web security company warns of scareware's risk - 2.19.2010
The rise in scareware attacks and cyber criminal behavior in general forced DynaSis, an IT services company, to issue a warning to its users about the threat of fake anti-virus software infecting their computers on Friday.
Age-old trick with brand-new target - 1.18.2010
Cyber criminals have turned to a scam from the early days of the internet to target the growing smartphone market: Trojan phone dialers.
|
