Entertainment For Lively Minds
Twitter hacks
Posted by Lenny Law on 12 August 2011 - 11:14pm.
Be aware. Twitter accounts of Word bloggers are being hacked into and virus posts and DMs are being sent. Thus far, me, Five Centres and HP Wonderful have been affected as far as I know. Is there a security gap anywhere? Over the last week, I've only been accessing Twitter and The Blog using an iPad.
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Any new apps ?
Last time this happened there was a new app that was some kind of trojan. It claimed to let you see who had looked at your profile or track your unfollowers or something.
Can you check what twitter apps have access to your account ?
Nice video, BTW
Not using any.
As far as I know.
Massive Member Tom has DM'd me
A saucy video link disguised as
Avoid and check your Twitter accounts
Check Your Applications
Log into the Twitter & check Settings/Applications, if there's anything you dont recognise or cant remember granting access to hit the Revoke button.
OS X and iOS
don't have security problems, so I think you're all just being a bit silly.
I had a message about a weight-loss programme
from HPWonderful that looked a bit strange. I think it must be a bit like the thing that goes around facebook every now and then saying 'look who's following you' and when you click it, it sends messages to all your friends - hopefully more just an annoyance rather than a security breach.
Thanks to HPWonderful
I've lost 5lbs
I got that message too.
Yesterday, also 'from' HPW
@JohnnyMedd is dead
Long live @JohnMeddUK
Yeah, I've been soiled. I was advised to change my user name and password. So that's what I've done. Apologies if you opened any DMs sent from 'me'.
Twitter hacking
It's like hotmail hacking, very common. And it's not "Twitter accounts of Word bloggers" that are being compromised, it's Twitter accounts, full stop. http://support.twitter.com/articles/31796
Perhaps a bit more than an annoyance then
How does it happen?
It happens with any popular service
Facebook gets its share too. Once a service reaches a certain size, it becomes a worthwhile target for spammers, who'll write scripts to attack the services in question, exploiting security holes that'll be be closed oncer people realise what's going on, and the spammers will attack somewhere else. It's like a giant game of digital whack-a-mole.
Digital Whack-a-Mole
Great name, great band, TMFTL!
You get a DM from someone you follow
The DM says something like "Look at this video" followed by a link. If you click on the link, you get infected and, without your knowledge, pass on the DM to your followers.
Whether it's a pure virus - i.e. designed only to replicate itself ad infinitum - or something more pernicious, I don't know.
The solution seems to be to change your password and revise the external permissions in your settings (see above), revoking any you don't recognise or need.
Out of interest
How many of you use the same username and password here as on twitter?
So far as I know, there was only here and Twitter, I used the particular login of itf and (my password at the time) - all my machines receive a clean bill of antivirus health and I'm pretty sure I haven't been phished. So if all of us have the same user/pass combo here as on twitter, then here might indeed be the source. Are you running the latest Drupal, Fraser? (I'm assuming this is Drupal, it feels like it)
This is a Twitter security issue
A Google search for "twitter hacked" (quotes used) produces 14,000 results from the last seven days alone, and searching for "hacked" on Twitter in the middle of last week produced lists of people complaining about their accounts being compromised. But to answer your question, neither Five-Centres nor Lenny Law nor Handsome.P.Wonderful use their Word user names at Twitter.