Twitter users hit by smut spam hack attack

Poor beseiged Twitter users were hit by a new series of attacks on Friday.

Subscribers to the popular micro-blogging site received malicious messages from compromised accounts inviting them to visit a pornographic website. The messages, which posed as tweets, tried to tempt users into visiting a site called chatwebcamfree.com.

Twitter confirmed around 750 accounts were hit during the attack. Passwords of affected profiles have been reset so as to restore control of the profiles to their rightful owners.

Victims of the attack included technology journalist Dennis Howlett.

It's unclear how the compromised accounts were hacked in the first place. Twitter's security gnomes are investigating the attack.

Sophos notes that the same website was recently promoted in spam messages sent through Facebook. The mechanism of that attack isn't clear either, but using phishing tactics to obtain login credentials prior to sending spam messages has been used in previous junk message attacks involving Facebook and is the favoured method this time around.

Sophos has a write-up of both attacks, including screenshots, here.

The latest Twitter attack comes hot on the heels of a SMS spoofing attack and shortly after an even more high profile attack back in January. During the January attack the profiles of several celebrities were taken over, allowing cheeky crackers to post messages suggesting that Britney Spears had a four foot vagina with razor-sharp teeth, among other things. ®