Twitter hit by phishing and hacks

Popular micro-blog site latest target of link spammers.

The latest social networking craze, micro-blogging service

Twitter

, has joined the likes of

MySpace

and

Facebook

in being exploited by phishers, spammers and hackers in a spate of incidents over the past few days.

A slick phishing campaign led to the hijacking of numerous user accounts via a spoofed login page. The accounts were then used to seed messages leading further users to hand over their account data, as well as posting link spam leading to suspect sites. Hot on the heels of this, news emerged that several accounts belonging to celebrities as diverse as Barack Obama and Britney Spears had been hacked in a separate incident, and were being defaced with humorous messages.

Details of the incidents are blogged by

Twitter

staff

here

and

here

, with more comment in

The Register


here

, from David Harley at

ESET


here

, and from Graham Cluley at

Sophos


here

and

here

.

Posted on 06 January 2009 by

Virus Bulletin