Twitter users have become accustomed to a variety of spam and malware scams permeating the microblogging service yet thousands of tweeters still continue to fall victim to some of the more obvious ruses.
As eSecurity Planet reports, a new worm circulating throughout the Twittersphere uses a URL shortening service to redirect victims through a number of sites before landing at a fake antivirus software page.
This scareware page then attempts to convince victims that their PCs or mobile devices are infected and then tricks them into downloading a bogus AV application. The download actually spreads more malware and extorts victims to pay for a fake AV product they don’t need or want.
“The redirection chain may push Twitter users to a fake antivirus serving the ‘Security Shield’ rogue AV,” Brulez said. “The webpage is using exactly the same obfuscation techniques as a previous version which is an implementation of RSA cryptography in JavaScript to obfuscate the page code.”
Malicious links to scareware sites have become more and more common as hackers aggressively mine social networking platforms for personal information they can then use to create more authenticate-looking malware lures.