[ISN] Twitter Has Security Meltdown

From: InfoSec News <alerts_at_private>
Date: Tue, 6 Jan 2009 00:32:51 -0600 (CST)
http://www.informationweek.com/news/internet/security/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=212700652

By Thomas Claburn
InformationWeek
January 5, 2009

Twitter's security melted down on Monday in the face of a phishing 
campaign directed at Twitter users and the hacking of Twitter's support 
software.

The security failure has resulted in the temporary takeover of Twitter 
accounts associated with Facebook, Fox News, The Huffington Post, Barack 
Obama, Britney Spears, and CNN's Rick Sanchez.

The phishing campaign was first reported on Saturday. Tech blogger Chris 
Pirillo warned that he had received a direct message from one of his 
Twitter followers advising him to visit sites designed to look like 
Twitter's logon page that smelled "phishy."

"The message bears a link to a Web site that only appears to come from 
Twitter but is of course a scam Web site where your account information 
will be stolen,"Symantec (NSDQ: SYMC) researcher Marian Merritt 
explained in a blog post.

On Monday, Twitter acknowledged that it was having other security 
problems. "A number of high-profile Twitter accounts were compromised 
this morning, and fake/spam updates were sent on their behalf," Twitter 
said in a blog post. "We have identified the cause and blocked it. We 
are working to restore compromised accounts."

[...]


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Received on Mon Jan 05 2009 - 22:32:51 PST

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