Showing Tag: "twitter" (Show all posts)

FAQ: The ins and outs of DoS attacks

Posted by Oyya-Info on Friday, August 7, 2009, In : Security

Thursday's denial-of-service attack that knocked Twitter offline for a few hours and affected Facebook, LiveJournal, and Google Sites and Blogger wasn't your average attack.

Typically, someone who has a bone to pick with a specific Web site will round up some hijacked PCs and use them to try to shut the site down. In this case, whoever was responsible was trying to block access to a specific user's accounts and not the sites themselves.

Denial-of-service attacks aren't always straight forwa...

Twitter warms up malware filter

Posted by Oyya-Info on Tuesday, August 4, 2009, In : Webware

Twitter's new malware filter is a sign the social media site is stepping up efforts to stem attacks, but the measure has its shortcomings, say security experts.

Twitter's filtering mechanism was highlighted by Mikko Hypponen, chief research officer of F-Secure, in a blog post Monday. When a user tries to submit a tweet with a suspect Web link, the following warning appears:

"Oops! Your tweet contained a URL to a known malware site!"

Twitter's latest security measure was a positive one, es...

Clickjacking: Hijacking clicks on the Internet

Posted by Oyya-Info on Monday, June 15, 2009, In : Security

What if you reached to grab a newspaper out of a news stand and you found a rock in your hand instead? How about opening the front door to a grocery store and ending up on a boat?

This sounds like a Matrix movie, but the virtual equivalent of this is real and poses one of the most serious new risks on the Internet, according to Jeremiah Grossman, chief technology officer and co-founder of Whitehat Security.

"Most exploits (like worms and attacks that take advantage of holes in software) ca...

Teen gets job and spreads another Twitter worm

Posted by Oyya-Info on Monday, June 15, 2009, In : Security

The teenager who created the worms that hit Twitter earlier this week has been hired by a Web application development firm and on Friday released a fifth worm on the microblogging site.

Twitter fought off four waves of worm attacks last weekend and into Monday in which Twitter users were infected just by clicking on the name or image of someone whose account was infected. The worms appeared to do no damage other than spread to infected users' followers and modify profile pages.

Michael...

Twitter cleans up after weekend worm attacks

Posted by Oyya-Info on Monday, June 15, 2009, In : TechNews

Twitter security engineers were cleaning up on Monday following a series of worm attacks over the weekend, including at least two credited to a bored 17-year-old.

In the first attack, which began early on Saturday, four new accounts began spreading a worm, compromising about 90 accounts, Twitter co-founder Biz Stone wrote in a posting on the Twitter blog.

The worms appeared to do no damage other than spread to infected users' followers and modify profile pages. You can get infected just by clic...