Followers have been lured to a Twitter phishing website

Mar 18, 2014 07:42 GMT  ·  By

The verified Twitter account of Julie Bishop, the Australian minister for foreign affairs, has been hacked. The attacker posted some tweets in an effort to lure Bishop’s followers to a phishing site.

The official’s account was hijacked on Monday morning (Australia time). The hacker posted the following messages on the compromised feed: “I’m laughing so much right now at this,” “LOL u got 2 read this, its awesome,” “I am lol’n so hard right now at this,” “lmao you gotta read this, its epic” and “haha this blog by you is crazy.”

All the messages were accompanied by shortened links pointing to a page that replicated the Twitter login page.

Julie Bishop has confirmed that her account has been hijacked. At the time of writing, it appears that most of the links pointing to the phishing site no longer work. However, it’s possible that many users clicked on the links and handed over their credentials on the Twitter phishing site.

When the accounts of public figures are hijacked, the attacker often takes the opportunity to make fun of them. However, if they’re after financial gain, luring a celebrity’s followers to a phishing page, a site that promotes weight loss products or other types of scams can be highly profitable.