The Twitter like platform messaging is a major target for cybercriminals, and according to the security firm TrendMicro there are more than 20.000 accounts used in phishing campaigns and sending malicious links.
The system είναι απλό, στοχεύει ανυποψίαστους χρήστες και τους παραπέμπει σε ψεύτικες σελίδες που μοιάζουν με το Twitter για να κάνουν login.
After the hacking ενός λογαριασμού, οι εγκληματίες αρχίζουν να αποστέλλουν μηνύματα στους φίλους του θύματος, προτρέποντας τους να κάνουν κλικ σε ένα σύνδεσμο που παραπέμπει σε μια σελίδα phishing. Η κακόβουλη address loads a fake Twitter login page, giving the impression that the user is logged out, for some reason.
The candidate victim tries to reconnect, but all information is sent directly to the fraudsters.
Security company TrendMicro observed this phishing system over a period of three months from the first of March of 2014 onwards. The results of their research report that during the peak days, fraudsters used more than 20.000 accounts to send malicious links with over 13.000 separate addresses.
22.282 accounts were violated on 18 March 2014 and were used to distribute phishing links. One day later, malicious URLs with 23,372 different addresses were sent to 5.148 users.
"Since June, however, Twitter has begun to reduce the volume of malicious links and phishing has dropped significantly," Jon Oliver, a senior TrendLabs executive, said in a post.
Phishing on Twitter is hard to limit
Tracking malicious activity on Twitter is particularly difficult for security researchers because they can not use automated tools that are effective for detecting malware.
Honeypots, sandboxes, and web reputation tools can not capture malicious messages because they are sent by legitimate users and contain abbreviated URLs.
According to the company's survey, the largest number of clicks (49%) on phishing links registered in the three-month study came from the United States, followed by Japan at a distance, with 15%.
Άλλες χώρες που έπεσαν στις παγίδες των απατεώνων είναι η Αυστραλία (6%), το Ηνωμένο Βασίλειο (5%), ο Canada (4%), οι Φιλιππίνες, η Μαλαισία, και η Γαλλία μα 2% η καθεμία, η Ινδονησία και η Ολλανδία με 1% η καθεμία.
