Beware of 'This Person Is Threatening to Expose You' Twitter Phishing Scams Stealing Logins

Twitter users are being warned of an enticing direct message claiming 'This Person Is Threatening to Expose something bad about you', which leads to a malicious phishing site that closely resembles the actual Twitter home page.

Twitter has a vast user base, ranked as the second largest social network falling behind the billion-plus user time vacuum we know as Facebook. Over the years, Twitter has been the attacked almost as much as the recent George Zimmerman and Trayvon Martin trial. With that said, the latest scam to be conducted on Twitter is one that sends an alluring direct message only for the user to be redirected to a clever phishing site designed to steal login credentials.

Phishing happens to be a fresh idea in the minds of hackers even though the concept has been around for many years. Cybercrooks have found yet another way to send malicious direct messages through Twitter to lead users to a phishing site that has been special crafted to look just like a Twitter login home page.

Figure 1. Twitter phishing website to steal login credentials - source: Janne.is

This phishing site as shown in Figure 1 above, loads after the user clicks on a link within a direct message reading 'Hey this person is threatening to expose something really serious and bad about you', is designed to compromise the login information to the user's Twitter account. Armed with the login for a Twitter account a hacker could then exploit followers of the account owner by sending each of them the same type of message.

The possibilities of obtaining a Twitter login, especially of an account who may have hundreds or thousands of followers, are virtually endless. Security experts believe that these hacked accounts may eventually have malware campaigns launched from them where aggressive threats are spread onto vulnerable computers.

In the event that you are confronted with a Twitter phishing scam, and you suspect you have been victimized, you will want to promptly visit the twitter 'my account has been compromised' support page. From there, you may report the incident and attempt to keep damages to a minimum. At any rate, you should observe Twitter's tips on keeping your account secure through the help center.