14 DAY TRIAL // The Moment, a popular fashion blog belonging to the New York Times, had its Twitter account commandeered by cyber-crooks. Following the incident, more than half a million users of the micro-blogging platform received adult-oriented spam.
A message reading, "Everyone visit http://tinyurl.com/[removed] for 100% FREE webcam girls/guys doing anything you ask them in the chat, I love it personally," baffled The Moment's Twitter followers on Thursday.
The security breach was confirmed a couple of hours later, after the real owners regained control of the compromised account. "In case that spam wasn't obvious enough — Yes, we were hacked! What a lousy way to thank our half million followers. Sorry everybody!" they wrote.
"Of course, it was never likely that a Twitter account with so many followers was going to remain under the control of hackers for long – but the spammers probably didn't care about that. After all, if just a small percentage of people followed the link […] then it will have been worth their while," Sophos's Senior Technology Consultant, Graham Cluley, explained the motives of the attack.
The Moment is just the latest entry on what is becoming a long list of high-profile Twitter accounts that have been compromised this year. The list includes famous politicians, artists, TV hosts and even Twitter administrators. Just recently, we reported that a French hacker obtained control of an administrative account through social engineering and accessed private information from the profiles of Ashton Kutcher, Lily Rose Allen and Barack Obama.
Another incident occurred at the beginning of the year, when a hacker obtained the password of a Twitter staffer named Crystal. According to his own account, this was achieved through a brute force dictionary attack, which succeeded because the admin used the word "happiness" as her password. The perpetrators subsequently commandeered 33 accounts belonging to the likes of Britney Spears, Barack Obama, Rick Sanchez, or Fox News.
"Clearly, more people need to learn lessons of high profile attacks like this, and ensure that their online passwords are hard for the hackers to guess," Mr. Cluley noted. Other celebrities who got targeted on Twitter include Hannah Montana lead actress Miley Cyrus and award-winning rapper Kanye West.