The microblogging powerhouse has attracted a vast, young audience during its rapid ascent to the top 1,000 websites on Alexa.
Along the way, Twitter picked up its share of spammers, but most of them simply set up accounts and sent out spam messages through Twitter's interface.
But some enterprising new spammers have adopted a new strategy. Computer security company Kaspersky Lab discovered a rogue Twitter profile that's advertising adult downloads, provided users download a Flash-based player to play the movies.
That's the virus. If a user downloads the "player," they'll download and install a virus capable of hijacking their computer.
Although Kaspersky isn't releasing the name of the profile, their security alert includes a screenshot of the offending page. The account name is apparently the Portuguese for "pretty rabbit," which would make the profile Twitter.com/coelhobonito.
One of the most recent spam alerts involved a phony adult video-sharing website that was sending out spam emails with tantalizing subject lines like:
• White House hit by lightning.
• Obama drops out of presidential race.
• Italy knocked out of Euro 2008.
• Man wakes up from 40-year coma.
If a surfer clicks the link, they will find themselves at a fake adult site bearing the name "PornTube," where they'll be prompted to download a video plugin. The plugin is actually the spam bot, which will continue replicating itself if downloaded.
The PornTube site depicted in the spam messages is not affiliated with the actual adult video-sharing site PornTube.com.
