Twitter's Trending Topics Exploited By Enterprising Hackers

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» 08 June 2009

According to PandaLabs, an international network of technical support and research centers specializing in anti-virus solutions, hackers have found yet another new avenue to exploit within Twitter. Yet again, they're using the social networking site to circulate harmful links within the Twitter community. Moreover, it's actually easier to use than even the black hat search engine optimization methods publicized by McAfee a few weeks back.

Trending topics are topics within Twitter that's being noted the most by members of the micro-blogging service. Cyber miscreants are now tweeting about these topics in order to bait users into clicking the malevolent URLs and link downloads found in their posts, says Sean-Paul Correll, security evangelist and threat researcher at PandaLabs, in an interview with SCMagazineUS.com on Thursday.

For example, as of this writing, Apple WWDC (Worldwide Developers Conference) is the Twitter topic of choice. A hacker could post tweets like "Apple Online Store Goes Down for WWDC" holding links to malware sites, phishing sites, JavaScript-enabled compromises, and so on. Correll was even quoted to say, "Over the last 24 hours there have been over 3,000 malicious tweets," in his interview.

The most common malicious links connected to this newest hacker trend are mature-themed sites that attempt to compromise user PCs with spoofed anti-virus products, "but cyber criminals can change the attack at any time," Correll clarified.

This method of threat proliferation shows that hackers, like developers and Internet security experts, are willing to evolve and improve their hacking approach by making use of the newest trends or hottest services available on the worldwide web. Correll surmises that for these virtual desperados, the trending topics exploit is far-and-away the preeminent method of cyber attack compared to the more effort-driven black hat SEO attack.

The reason for this is because black hat SEO requires hackers to host content on either a hacker-friendly web host like the recently shutdown Pricewert or through compromising well-established web hosts in order to get their destructive links at the top of a search engine's results page.

Using Twitter, hackers (or even amateurish "script kiddies") can get their malicious links visited by simply picking the hottest subject on trending topics and posting a related tweet containing their PC-compromising link. Come to think of it, it's a method to nearly effortless mayhem.

What is Correll's advice for avoiding this newest Twitter hacker modus operandi? Don't click on links located in the trending topics section of Twitter "at all costs" because hackers will be using this cyber tactic for a long, long time.

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