Twitter Hit By BZPharma LOL Phishing Attack

An anonymous reader writes "Twitter users are being warned not to click on messages saying "'ol, this is funny,' as they can lead to their account details being stolen. A widespread attack has hit Twitter this weekend, tricking users into logging into a fake Twitter page — and thus handing their account details over to hackers. Messages include Lol. this is me?? / lol , this is funny. / ha ha, u look funny on here / Lol. this you?? followed by a link in the form of http://example/ [dot] com/?rid=http://twitter.verify.bzpharma [dot] net/login, where 'example.com' can vary. Clicking on the link redirects users to the second-half of the link, where the fake login page is hosted. In a video and blog entry, computer security firm Sophos is warning users that it is not just Twitter direct messages (DMs) that carry the poisoned links, but they are appearing on public profiles due to services such as GroupTweet which republish direct messages. Sophos also reports that the site being used for the Twitter phishing has also been constructed to steal information from users of the Bebo social network. Affected users are advised to change their passwords immediately."

You can't have twitter without

[Anonymous Coward]

twits.

we need to stop coddling stupidity.

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously, anyone with more than a few functional neurons is not going to type their password into a page they reached by clicking on a link from "LOL this is funny!".

We need to let people like that sink or swim. People end up being as stupid as we let them be. If we expect complete idiocy, we will *get* complete idiocy, and that harms the experience for the rest of us.

I say let these people experience the consequences of their own actions.

Re:Where the sheeple graze

[biryokumaru]

wolves

Shouldn't that be "wovles?" It would make more sense for "wovles" to prey on "sheeple."

Re:we need to stop coddling stupidity.

[InterruptDescriptorT]

I don't necessarily disagree with you when you say 'We need to let people like that sink or swim', but in this world of tightly connected social networks where friendship among individuals governs their level of access to your details, I'm not so sure about that. You're only as secure as your weakest link. If one of your less technologically-savvy friends on Facebook happens to fall for this scheme and gives up his login information to the attackers, then your information is exposed to them, and you're put at risk. This is why while I sympathize with your point, I still think it's incredibly important that phishing attacks like this be cracked down upon as quickly as possible to prevent exactly that sort of thing from happening.

Re:Interestingly...

[VoltageX]

Worth reporting to Mozilla/Google?

Re:we need to stop coddling stupidity.

[asdf7890]

It isn't that your information is exposed if a friend's account is broken into (if you have stuff on Facebook or similar that you would care about being made public, then you are doing it wrong), it is the fact that a compromised account means the frauster has easten their way at least one level into your trust network. This means you have to think that little bit harder about your day-to-day link clicking (assuming some of your contacts are like some of mine and their dribblings are not always easy to distinguish from spam/phishing).

The real problem is more dangerous phishing - that which attempts to gain access to bank details or attempts to convince the user to let some local code to install. There is no way we'll ever completely stamp that out just as there is no partical way of completely stamping out burglary. The only thing we can do is to try educate the general public (spit) to be a little (or in many cases a lot) less naive. This is unfortunately much easier said than done - some people seem incapable of maintaining a healthy level of synacism when promised free smilies/cheats/porm or just "lols".

Every now and then I consider starting a small spam/phish campaign that collects data, throws it all away, and give the user s "why the hell were you stupid enough to do that?!?!" message. Perhaps distrubuting it as an app that collects Facebook account details and uses them to post a message stating "is stupid enough to give their password to a third party website" before deleting them. The second most significan reason I don't do this (the first being I'm too lazy to bother) is that the idiots caught and made to look daft would see me as the enemy and not learn anything more generally useful (like "if one anonymous site promising free shit can't be trusted with my password/creditcard/wife then maybe others can't either") from the exercise. Maybe banks could do it with their own customer base though - send out a fake phish and lock the accounts of people that fall for it until such time as the phone up and promise to be more careful in future.

Re:we need to stop coddling stupidity.

[nedlohs]

If you put your information on facebook then it's already "exposed" to everyone. You'd have to be even dumber than someone who would fall for such a fake login link to think otherwise.

Pretty simple solution...

[EWAdams]

... ignore Twitter. That can't be hard, can it? How many hundreds of thousands of years did the human race do without it? And what has it contributed? The prosecution rests.