Computer Attack Disguised As Twitter Spam

Tuesday, August 5th, 2008

Erick Schonfeld is a technology journalist and the former Editor in Chief of TechCrunch. At TechCrunch, he oversaw the editorial content of the site, helped to program the Disrupt conferences and CrunchUps, produced TCTV shows, and wrote daily for the blog. He joined TechCrunch as Co-Editor in 2007, and helped take it from a popular blog to a thriving... → Learn More

Twitter spam just took a new twist. In addition to all the regular marketing spam on Twitter (which the service is has tried to combat with its own blacklist), now there is something even more malicious: a computer attack disguised as spam.

Computer security company Kaspersky Lab has found a Twitter profile that ostensibly looks like it is promoting pornographic downloads. But when you download the “Adobe Flash” player necessary to watch the video, it installs a Trojan Horse piece of software that can take over your computer. Kaspersky suspects Brazilian hackers. The name of the profile means “pretty rabbit” in Portuguese.

From the screen shot, it doesn’t look like the Twitter account only has one follower. The hackers are more likely using the Twitter page as a link that won’t draw as much scrutiny as a standalone Website. And you thought everyone on Twitter was nice.

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