Twitter Crime Caused by Celebrities

Twitter Crime Caused by Celebrities

IT Support was needed in a key period in early 2009 by the IT company behind the micro-blogging IT service Twitter because of some IT security problems. IT seems that criminals started targeting Twitter at the same time when some celebrities joined the Internet site. This information was analyzed by security company Barracuda Labs which came with some conclusions regarding these joined actions.

Barracuda's CRO, Dr. Paul Judge, said that "As soon as the Twitter user base and activity levels increased, hackers were prepared with novel attacks to compromise users. As social networking, and specifically Twitter, becomes more ingrained in everyday business, it is crucial to understand the nature of attacks happening on these sites." Because of the fact that celebrities like Ashton Kutcher, Oprah Winfrey, Ashley Tisdale, Miley Cyrus, Paris Hilton and music group Coldplay joined Twitter, public interest was high and cyber criminals took advantage of this fact.