Hackers Compromised Thousands of Twitter Accounts and Tweeted Links to Adult Sites

Hackers are no stranger to taking advantage of social media platforms to do their dirty work of spreading malicious links only to earn money through clicks made by unsuspecting users. During the past week, hackers are taking to Twitter to compromise user accounts, some belonging to high profile users or celebrities, only to tweet out adult content for the purpose of racking up clicks and impressions to earn money.

Twitter has had its fair share of exploitation and security issues in the past. Hackers have nothing better to do than find new methods to attack social networking platforms in a clever way. The new methods hackers are using to redirect computer users to sites that the hackers have agreements to earn money from driving web traffic and clicks. The tweets sent out from about 2,500 hacked Twitter accounts have a new face that resembles pornography as they aim to share adult content on their tweets to entice computer users.

There is no doubt that adult content sells and gains the attention of casual Internet surfers. Hackers are very aware of this very thing and have recently capitalized on the exploitation of adult content through Twitter by first compromising accounts and then using those accounts to send out adult images with links. The links found in many of the recently hacked Twitter accounts are shortened URLs, often using URL-shortening services like Bit.ly to hide a link to adult websites using referral tags.

Curious Twitter users may find some of the 2,500 or so hacked accounts enticing due to the nature of their content and sometimes provocative profile image that appears on their Twitter feed. In the recent efforts of hackers compromising Twitter accounts, they are prone to seek out accounts that have a large following or create new ones that Like, Follow, and Tweet directly with other users who may notice their racy profile picture. Moreover, the profile pictures are sometimes of women who are hardly wearing any clothes and later Tweet out a message with indecent images with an attached link.

Reported by Symantec, the recent Twitter account-take-over campaign has resulted in the compromise of several celebrity and high-profile accounts. Some of those Twitter accounts, such as Cecil Shorts III and comedian Azeem Banatwala, were taken over by hackers to send out tweets that included potentially malicious links. Many of the attacks have been touted as "identity testing attacks," a method of leveraging breached data, which become popular in the first quarter of 2016 according to the security firm ThreatMatrix.

Security firms such as Symantec and ThreatMatrix have also reminded the public that the passwords compromised in the breached Twitter accounts may be used to log into other online accounts. Such a method is a commonality for hackers where they may try to use compromised login credentials of particular users in an attempt to gain access to other accounts.

Twitter users are urged to be cautious of other accounts that Like and Follow their profiles and may have an enticing message or image set as their profile picture. The use of Adult content may seem to be remedial; however, it works quite well in garnering the attention of unsuspecting users who are prone to clicking on a link within a Tweet to "see more."