Twitter Suffers From a Series of Major Attacks

Twitter Suffers From a Series of Major Attacks

PandaLabs revealed micro-blogging site Twitter has become the latest prey of cybercriminals. These criminals create several profiles and post thousands of comments relating to the US rock band Phish, mostly with the topic ‘PhishTube Broadcast.'
 

With the use number of Tweets being published containing similar subjects, criminals can guarantee that the topics they create appear in the Trending Topic list. This means they get larger visibility and extensive traffic.

 

Once Twitter users click on the 'PhishTube Broadcast' Trending Topic link, malicious comments are then published in the profiles made by the cyber crooks. The links direct users to a bogus porn site. If they click on any items on the page, they will be infected with a copy of the PrivacyCenter fake antivirus.

 

PandaLabs technical director Luis Corrons said, “We have recently been warning of an increase in Black Hat SEO attacks, particularly those aimed at selling fake antivirus products. In this case, instead of a search engine, the Twitter ranking mechanism is the target of the attack, forcing topics to appear in the list of the most popular."

 

“Anyone interested in this topic will most likely end up on one of the thousands of malicious comments posted, although we have also seen a few legitimate comments. With millions of users, this network is extremely attractive to cybercriminals, and it is likely we will see it targeted more often in the future," Corrons added. 

 

PandaLabs said the topics have grown massively overnight. Threat researcher Sean-Paul Correl revealed thousands of tweets targeting trending topics were created for the past 24 hours.