Twitter Marketing Expert Guy Kawasaki Mistakenly Tweets 'Gossip Girl' Porn Malware

A security vendor's demonstration video reveals how a malicious Twitter link can lead to the installation of malware. Guy Kawasaki, a former Apple employee, venture capitalist, web site owner and book author, has spoken on many occasions about using Twitter as a social marketing tool. Kawasaki calls Twitter the most powerful marketing tool seen since television.

Unfortunately for this Twitter marketing professional and his followers, about 140,000 of them, had malware trolls attempt to get his followers to link to a rogue website that contained a fake sex tape involving "Gossip Girl" actress Leighton Meester. In addition to this, the domain prompted visitors to download malicious software in the form of video codecs which is a well-known tactic for spreading malware.

The online security software and hardware company, Sophos, managed to catch the malware on video. They have uploaded a live demonstration to the video sharing website YouTube in order for people to understand the threat and hopefully protect themselves against it.

Kawasaki made a formal apology for the accident and a possible larger issue as stated in the Wall Street Journal:

"Mr. Kawasaki isn't the only victim of this attack (it's one of several malware schemes popping up on Twitter), but his relative celebrity on the microblogging service makes such an incident even more troublesome since so many people see it, said Graham Cluley, a senior technology consultant at Sophos. It has the potential to do much more damage than if maybe 14 people were following him."