Twitter Virus

Computer viruses can be transmitted through Twitter

Twitter an increasingly popular Internet service that lets you share 140-character text messages with people who sign up to "follow" you. One of Twitter's attractions is that you can include links to websites---news, videos, information---in your Twitter posts. But that popularity means that computer hackers find Twitter attractive as well, making Twitter a potent source of computer viruses.

Significance

Twitter is used by over 14 million people in the United States alone. It is popular in part because it is easy to share links to interesting news and websites. With so many people using the service, a computer virus could easily spread through the network, infecting hundreds of thousands of computers, just through people clicking on a fake link in a Twitter post.

Types of Twitter Viruses

There are three types of Twitter "viruses": spam, phishing attacks and actual viruses.

Twitter spam are unwanted commercial messages spread through Twitter posts and are easy to spot.

Twitter phishing attacks are Twitter posts that pretend to be from your bank, credit card company or other account site. They lure you to a fake website where you will be asked to enter private information such as passwords, credit card numbers or bank accounts.

Twitter viruses are Twitter posts that lure you to a website (by promising hot gossip, celebrity news or funny videos) that will automatically download a computer program that will perform some malicious action such as erasing files, sending out email messages to your contacts or posting unwanted Twitter updates.

Prevention/Solution

You can prevent Twitter spam by "unfollowing" the offending Twitter account.

Twitter phishing attacks and Twitter viruses are more difficult to detect. Webllinks in Twitter posts are sometimes automatically shortened to fit within Twitter's 140-character limit. These links look like nonsense characters (for example, http://cot.ag/9W3sGC) so it's difficult to tell whether you will go to a legitimate website, a phishing or virus site when pressing them.

The best solution is to be cautious. Don't follow links in Twitter posts if you don't know the sender. And if you do know the sender and the post seems out of character, also be cautious---their Twitter account may have been taken over by a virus. If in doubt, reply to the sender, asking if it's legitimate.

References

• Your Security Resource/ Twitter Safety
• Mashable/ How Many People Use Twitter?

Resources

• The Internet Security Zone/ Twitter Viruses, Scams and Attacks--How to Protect Yourself