Hackers Attack Twitter Accounts Through Phishing Attacks
On Monday many reports were verified that a phishing attack against Twitter affected the pages for Britney Spears, Fox news and Barack Obama. Twitter was already aware of earlier phishing attacks where they reset the affected user's accounts over the weekend. Although information such as a username and password stolen from a Twitter account does not seem to be such a threat, it may be the fact of the username and password belonging to other personal accounts where hackers could access.
Graham Cluley, Sophos' Senior technology consultant, mentioned that many people use one password for many different websites which could create a much greater risk for compromised users. Just think, if you use the same password for your banking access as your Twitter account a hacker could be armed with enough information from your Twitter account to clean out your wallet.
The phishing messages varied from messages that stated Fox hose Bill O'Reilly is gay, rude comments from Britney Spears about Barack Obama and an offer for a $500 gas card for taking a Barack Obama survey. Each of the messages are catchy enough for someone to click on a link and then the resulting in a redirect to a phishing site that may attempt to obtain your username and password.
Below is an image of one of the phishing attack messages on Twitter
Luckily enough all Twitter users who fell for this Phishing attempt were identified and all account passwords reset. It seems a hacker was able to gain access into a tool and guess the password of their support team employees through an old-fashioned dictionary attack.