The dangers of Twitter
(Copied from SWITCH newsletter, July 2009)
Needless to say Twitter has become a very popular micro-blogging service.
However, the more popular a service becomes on the Internet, the more attractive it appears to cyber criminals. Over the last few weeks, several entries in form of links appeared to attract users to click on them. The links point to various special prepared web sites that infect the visitors PC with malware. In order to attract many people these fake messages often cover recent, popular topics.
It is very unlikely that this trend will stop in the next few weeks. The announcement of security experts certainly supports this assumption. One has declared the month of July as the "month of Twitter bugs". On each day in July he plans to publish a different vulnerability of the micro-blogging service.
Of course many attackers will also follow these revealing secrets and use them for their own purposes.
An American couple just recently highlighted the risk of posting seemingly trivial messages. According USA Today they announced their holiday plans on Twitter. While on the road, their home was burgled. Whether the burglars where informed by the twitter messages or not is unknown.
by IT Department