Fake Twitter Profile Links To Worm

By DT Staff Published October 25, 2009

Image used with permission by copyright holder

First it was Facebook and MySpace, where messages from “friends” contained a link to install the latest Flash Player – which proved to be a worm that made the user’s computer part of a botnet. Now it’s micro-blogging site Twitter – which is the first time the site has been attacked.

The BBC reports that security company Kaspersky Lab says a fake profile on Twitter purports to have a link to a porn video. Instead it loads a fake version of Flash that in fact contains programs capable of stealing personal data. Kaspersky also discovered the worms on Facebook and MySpace.

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The fake profile is in Portuguese with a name that translates to “pretty rabbit.” It exhorts people to click on the link and download Flash to view the video. The problem only affects PCs running Windows.

Alexander Gostev, a senior virus analyst at Kaspersky Lab, said:

"Unfortunately, users are very trusting of messages left by friends on social networking sites so the likelihood of a user clicking on a link like this is very high."

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