Celebrity Twitter Accounts Hacked
Posted by: Timothy Weaver on 01/23/2017 11:58 AM
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Three celebrity Twitter accounts were compromised Jan. 13th in an effort to send viewers spam.
MalwareBytes reported the three as: Denise Crosby, an actress on Star Trek: The Next Generation; Jennifer Kaytin Robinson, creator of the MTV show Sweet/Vicious; and BBC presenter Alex Jones.
The hacking fortunately did not involve malicious software, but rather spam. Crosby's account was advertising pornographic dating links. Robinson's account was redirecting viewers to a Tumbler page that was leading to dating spam and Jones's account was offering discount Ray-Ban sunglasses.
It could have been worse considering that the combined viewership was estimated at 260,000 followers.
“They're all well-known actresses and TV hosts, and word spread across Twitter quickly via their large follower base,” said Christopher Boyd, malware intelligence analyst and blog post author at Malwarebytes.
Each of the celebrities accounts with Twitter are verified, meaning they bear a green check mark which indicates that they have been authenticated as themselves, not impostors. That assurance could lull a follower into thinking the links were secure. This “could have been disastrous if the links had contained malicious files. Thankfully, these links were 'just' porn spam and sunglasses,” Boyd wrote.
Source: SCMagazine
MalwareBytes reported the three as: Denise Crosby, an actress on Star Trek: The Next Generation; Jennifer Kaytin Robinson, creator of the MTV show Sweet/Vicious; and BBC presenter Alex Jones.The hacking fortunately did not involve malicious software, but rather spam. Crosby's account was advertising pornographic dating links. Robinson's account was redirecting viewers to a Tumbler page that was leading to dating spam and Jones's account was offering discount Ray-Ban sunglasses.
It could have been worse considering that the combined viewership was estimated at 260,000 followers.
“They're all well-known actresses and TV hosts, and word spread across Twitter quickly via their large follower base,” said Christopher Boyd, malware intelligence analyst and blog post author at Malwarebytes.
Each of the celebrities accounts with Twitter are verified, meaning they bear a green check mark which indicates that they have been authenticated as themselves, not impostors. That assurance could lull a follower into thinking the links were secure. This “could have been disastrous if the links had contained malicious files. Thankfully, these links were 'just' porn spam and sunglasses,” Boyd wrote.
Source: SCMagazine
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