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Hacker used Twitter to control infected PCs

Posted on August 15, 2009 by Dissent

Twitter’s been having a rough couple of weeks.

A researcher looking into the attacks that knocked Twitter offline last week discovered another, unrelated security problem.

At least one criminal was using a Twitter account to control a network of a couple hundred infected personal computers, mostly in Brazil. Networks of infected PCs are referred to as “botnets” and are responsible for so much of the mayhem online, from identity theft to spamming to the types of attacks that crippled Twitter.

Jose Nazario with Arbor Networks said he found a Twitter account that was used to send out what looked like garbled messages. But they were actually commands for computers in a botnet to visit malicious websites, where they download programs that steal banking passwords.

Read more in the Sydney Morning Herald.


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Category: Business SectorID TheftMalwareOf Note

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