14 DAY TRIAL // One of the 588,000 Twitter followers of Salman Rushdie, the famous British Indian novelist and essayist, has informed us that the author’s account was compromised a few hours ago.
The cybercriminals that took over the account abused it to distribute links to shady miracle diet websites.
Rushdie managed to quickly recover the account and changed its password to protect it from hackers.
“Apologies. My twitter account was hacked. Have changed password so the spam should stop,” he wrote on Twitter shortly after the incident.
Salman Rushdie is not the only celebrity whose Twitter account is hijacked by miracle diet spammers. Last week, the Twitter accounts of singer Cher and actor Alec Baldwin were compromised in the same way.
It appears the cybercrooks behind this scheme are phishing out the credentials for Twitter accounts that have a large number of followers to ensure that as many people as possible visit their scammy websites.
Note. Thanks to Twitter user @danutclaudiu for the tip.