Expert: Twitter accounts hijacked in new attack

This is the malicious tweet that links people to a dubious Web site, Trend Micro says.

(Credit: Trend Micro)

Twitter users looking for a little entertainment on a boring Friday may want to go elsewhere to get their fix.

A new attack was hijacking Twitter users Friday, with at least 700 accounts being compromised in two hours beginning at about 11 a.m. PST (7 p.m. GMT), security researcher Rik Ferguson wrote on the Trend Micro blog.

Victims are clicking on a link in a tweet that lures them with the promise of chatting with a 23-year-old woman on a Webcam.

"It appears that there is a rash of Twitter account hijacking going on this evening," Ferguson wrote.

"Obviously we recommend against clicking on this link, it leads to a porn Webcam portal which looks to have been designed with credit card harvesting in mind," he wrote. "Affected users should change their password to a secure one as soon as possible."

Twitter co-founder Biz Stone confirmed the attack and said the company had reset the passwords of the compromised accounts and removed the "spammy updates." "Today we discovered about 750 Twitter accounts were broken into and had a link to a webcam site posted on the accounts," he wrote on his blog. It appears other sites and services have been affected by a similar attack.

Stone urged people to use strong passwords for their Twitter accounts and not to share passwords with anyone.

Twitter fended off a series of clickjacking attempts last month in which users were tricked into sending out spam tweets.

. Updated 4:25 p.m. PST with Twitter comment.

[JCPayne]

All of the Instant Messaging companies (Except AOL IM because it has the "WARN" feature) have ignored for years the mass spamming methods where people tell you... to come- and click on their website so you can join them etc.... It only seems natrual that they would target other services next.

[stoneman57]

Any fool that clicks on a link in a message like that DESERVES whatever they get. THAT is an OBVIOUS malicious message and link. It's truly unbelievable how gullible & stupid some people are, not to mention perverted!

[Mnithin]

This is disgusting. Though ppl are aware about the facts that such sites do exist where our passwords gets compromised. Its total foolishness from our part. They should be aware that melicious message do exist every where.

[henrikflensborg]

750 compromised accounts is really nothing compared to the number of accounts that would be affected by the countless Twitter services that *require* your Twitter name and password in order to work.

It only takes one bad apple amongst the Twitter services companies - right down to just *one* employee with less than stellar ethics - or just one Twitter services company getting hacked or otherwise compromised to have an outbreak