Watch out for Twitter nitwits

Beware: There's a rash of cyberspace attackers trying to plant a "bot" or some other sort of malware on your PC. They've graduated from email-based exploits to the use of "Web 2.0" social networking sites to do their dirty work. Twitter is the most recent example. Here's how it works:

Logging into Twitter, you get a request, maybe in a foreign language, to "follow" another user. But the sender's real intent is to get you to click on an enticing web link in the message, purportedly to view a photo or video. You click on it, and a message pops up telling you that you need a "Flash update" to view the video, with a convenient web link to the file. You run the self-installing file, which... you guessed it, installs a malware program on your PC.

This kind of attack isn't new. What's novel, and what changes the demographic, is the "vector" being a social-networking site. We strongly recommend everyone practice—and promote to others who may not understand the danger—the safe computing practices we outline in our cyber-security section.

We'd add that you should be aware of new "social engineering" tricks like this one, that cloak malware payloads inside a process that seems innocent, but ends in that most perilous of actions: your approving installation of malware.

—Dean Gallea