Sophos: Twitter Phishing Scam Lures Users with TinyURL

Sophos: Twitter Phishing Scam Lures Users with TinyURL

Written By
Brian Prince
Brian Prince
May 21, 2009
1 minute read
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The folks at Sophos are reporting a new phishing scam on Twitter.

In this episode of “When Malware Writers Attack,” senior technology consultant Graham Cluley blogged that he received a message saying he was being followed on Twitter by someone called “3XNJTVJG0SYIKDH.” This person was already following nearly 400 people on Twitter, and had only posted one update:

check this guy out [followed by a tinyurl address]

The tinyurl actually leads to the site tvviter.com. That’s right, Tvviter, with two Vs. Clicking on the link leads to a site that poses as Twitter.com and will prompt visitors for their username and password.

The Website was blocked when I attempted to visit it using Mozilla Firefox, but appeared when I surfed there using Internet Explorer. According to Sophos, there are a number of usernames out there tied to the scam, some of which are listed here at the bottom of the page.

Reminder to Twitter users — be careful when clicking on tinyurl addresses, and don’t be afraid to take advantage of the Firefox add-on LongURL.

Happy surfing.

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