UK Cabinet Minister Ed Miliband as well as several other members of the British upper class are among those who have fallen victim to a

phishing attack through Twitter. The virus attack came to light when UK Secretary for Energy and Climate Change Miliband began to notice that his Twitter account was transmitting spam tweets, sending messages of a highly explicit nature. The message included a link that invited visitors to enter their personal information, which then fell into the hands of the hackers behind the phishing scheme.  

Twitter were not slow to issue a warning, asking subscribers to keep their eyes open for direct messages (DMs)  containing phrases like  ” is this you??’ or ‘LOL is this you’ as well as  a link. If they receive such a message, they should discard it immediately.  Anyone who does fall victim to the scam will not only be likely to pass on their sensitive personal information as well as sending out some fairly lurid messages to friends and foes alike.

Also known to be a definite victim of the phishing scam is a key executive of the online branch of a major UK bank, who has seemingly spent the better part of last week on the phone apologising and explaining that the messages (as well as the offers they contained) did not come from him.  Others who refuse to either confirm or deny that they may have fallen victim include another very highly placed Labour official to a number of print and radio journalists.

Software security analysts have reported an increased interest in compromising Twitter accounts, supposedly as a reaction to Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo’s recent steps that will increasingly integrate nearly real-time data such as Twitter posts into their search engine results. This has apparently left a number of openings for hackers to use Twitter as well as the other social networking tools to target keywords. These keywords particularly include news events, which they use to secure prominent positions. When a surfer clicks on the link, malware, .such as that used to affect Ed Miliband among others is then introduced onto the computer or mobile phone.

Such a short term yet potentially damaging attack goes to show that once again people who like instant access to information cannot afford to leave anything to chance. Phishers are working flat out to devise new schemes to harvest sensitive and often classified information, that .can cause tremendous harm if it falls into the wrong hands as well as severe  embarrassment in many cases.

That’s why every individual and organisation should take their internet security very seriously.   

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Tags: Anti Virus, Anti-Phishing software, Digital Download Products, Ed Miliband, Mcafee, phished, Phishing, phishing fraudsters, Phishing Scams, Trojan Horses, Twitter, Viruses

Recent reports have it that hackers are attempting to steal the identities of Twitter users, through a fairly sophisticated phishing scheme. What appears to be making the scheme easier to spot is that the hackers are bulk e-mailing subscribers, with some attempted victims, receiving up to ten e-mails a day containing the following message.

“Due to concern that your account may have been compromised in a phishing attack that took place off-Twitter, your password was reset. Please create a new password by opening this link in your browser” Needless to say the link was false, and those who fell victim to the scam had inadvertently given away all of their account information.

Yet who can be truly surprised that the latest internet sensation would become a target of an online phishing campaign. After all, they are only falling in the footsteps of Facebook, Google, Hotmail, EarthLink, Yahoo, and Comcast among others.  Estimates are that more than one million accounts may have been compromised, resulting in login details falling in to the unscrupulous hands of phishers.

The earliest examples of phishing that were seen on the internet were the almost laughable “Nigerian prince” scams that were very active around five years, although quite a few people fell victim to them. Another more recent example was a bulk e-mail campaign by phishers posing as representatives of PayPal, asking for account holders for their user name and password, again bringing surprisingly good results for the hackers and bad news for those who fell victim.

Some of the profits from these phishes appear to have been invested in the next generation of phishing, known as “spear phishing,” in which the web fraudsters have used a friendly and local cover to attempt to prize sensitive information from the unsuspecting public. If scammers send an email blast to an entire local community, under the disguise of a bank or local department store, the chances are that a few people will click on the link before news spreads.

This is the reason why internet users are urged to regularly update their passwords, even though it can some inconvenience. Yet the inconvenience will certainly bear no comparison to that caused if a person’s identity is stolen, Another, and probably more efficient method of preventing cyber theft, is install the most powerful anti-virus software on the market and to take every step to make sure that it is maintained and  up to date to protect themselves from  phishing fraudsters.

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Tags: Comcast, EarthLink, Facebook, Google, Hotmail, phishing campaign, phishing fraudsters, Phishing Scams, Trojan Horses, Viruses, Yahoo