Tuesday, September 22, 2009

Cyberthieves using Twitter to sell fake antivirus software

What's happening: Cyberthieves are taking advantage of security weaknesses in Twitter to take sell them fake antivirus software

What it means: The Twitter situation corroborates IBM's recent study of web security in which they wrote: The result is "an unprecedented state of Web insecurity as Web client, server and content threats converge to create an untenable risk landscape," according to the report." See our blog posting http://citadelonsecurity.blogspot.com/2009/08/ibm-online-threat-report-trust-no-one.html.

What to do: Don't fall for online ads "scareware." Keep your systems patched -- not just Windows but Acrobat Reader, JAVA, Flash and all the other software on your PC. Keep Twitter, Facebook and other social sites out of the corporate environment. Consider replacing antvirus / antimalware solutions with intrusion detection / prevention solution.

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From Computerworld: Scammers auto-generate Twitter accounts to spread scareware.
They use bogus accounts, real tweets, to dupe people into installing fake antivirus software.

http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9138361/Scammers_auto_generate_Twitter_accounts_to_spread_scareware?source=CTWNLE_nlt_security_2009-09-22