Commonground
Senior Moderator
27 February, 2010, by Desire Athow
Micro-blogging giant Twitter was affected by a serious phishing attack which resulted in a flood of spam messages coming from hacked accounts, with most of them belonging to some high-profile UK cabinet ministers and a few banks.
It was reported that the Twitter accounts of British MP Ed Miliband, Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change and the Labour Party Deputy Leader Harriet Harman were sending links to websites selling fake medicine after being compromised by the phishing attack.
Popular telephone banking service FirstDirect was also affected by the attack, which sent out links to suspicious websites that tricked the unsuspecting users into giving their Twitter log-in credentials.
The bank issued a sincere a statement, acknowledging the attack and adding that ?Just to clarify - no password issues, it was a link in a DM. No customer / personal data has been compromised. Sorry for any offence caused.?
Several security experts are of the opinion that the phishing attack on Twitter is linked to the inclusion of Twitter updates into several search engines as it opens up a great way of spreading spam throughout the internet.
Meanwhile, Twitter representatives advised affected users to change their Twitter passwords and avoid clicking on links belonging to suspicious websites.
http://www.itproportal.com/security...ve-twitter-phish-attack-hits-ministers-banks/
Micro-blogging giant Twitter was affected by a serious phishing attack which resulted in a flood of spam messages coming from hacked accounts, with most of them belonging to some high-profile UK cabinet ministers and a few banks.
It was reported that the Twitter accounts of British MP Ed Miliband, Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change and the Labour Party Deputy Leader Harriet Harman were sending links to websites selling fake medicine after being compromised by the phishing attack.
Popular telephone banking service FirstDirect was also affected by the attack, which sent out links to suspicious websites that tricked the unsuspecting users into giving their Twitter log-in credentials.
The bank issued a sincere a statement, acknowledging the attack and adding that ?Just to clarify - no password issues, it was a link in a DM. No customer / personal data has been compromised. Sorry for any offence caused.?
Several security experts are of the opinion that the phishing attack on Twitter is linked to the inclusion of Twitter updates into several search engines as it opens up a great way of spreading spam throughout the internet.
Meanwhile, Twitter representatives advised affected users to change their Twitter passwords and avoid clicking on links belonging to suspicious websites.
http://www.itproportal.com/security...ve-twitter-phish-attack-hits-ministers-banks/