Recent cyberattacks on Twitter and other popular Web services disrupted the lives of millions

The recent cyberattacks on Twitter and other popular Web services disrupted the lives of millions of Internet users

Preliminary indications have the attacks originating in Russia and Georgia (Former Soviet Union Territory).

NYTIMES.COM stated:
"Security experts say that it is nearly impossible to determine who exactly is behind the attack, which disrupted access to Twitter, Facebook, LiveJournal and some Google sites on Thursday and continued to affect many Twitter users into Friday evening."

Twitter still fighting off DoS attack

According to researchers at SecurityOrb.com Twitter the social networking micro-blogging is still struggling to recover from the DoS attack. User have not been able to post comments via SMS, the web or client based-applications. It is apperent that the company continues to fight off the attack.

Below is part of message that was posted on their blog:

"Due to defensive measures we've taken against the ongoing denial-of-service attack, some Twitter clients are unable to communicate with our API, and many users are unable to tweet via SMS."

"We are working as quickly as possible to restore our full service."

There is no word on when service will resume...

Source: SecurityOrb.com

DoS Cyber Attack Takes Twitter Offline

Attacks on the social networking site Twitter Thursday morning left many users unable to access and update their status.

Twitter was back up by mid-day and it was reported that the attacks had originated either from Russia or the former Soviet republic Georgia.

Twitter confirmed the outage was linked to malicious attackers in a brief status message posted around 11:00 a.m EST.

We are defending against a denial-of-service attack, and will update status again shortly.

Update: the site is back up, but we are continuing to defend and recover from this attack.

Facebook experienced problems for part of the day, but it was unknown if they were the result of this attack.

References:

Source: http://isc.sans.org/diary.html?storyid=6922
Source: http://status.twitter.com/post/157191978/ongoing-denial-of-service-attack
Source: http://blogs.zdnet.com/security/?p=3953
Source: http://www.courant.com/business/hc-twitter0807.artaug07,0,4042649.story

Twitter shutdown accounts

Twitter is suspending the accounts of some users whose computers have fallen victim to a well-known piece of malicious software that has targeted other sites such as Facebook and MySpace.

The malware, Koobface, is designed to spread itself by checking to see if person is logged into a social network. It will then post fraudulent messages on the person's Twitter account trying to entice friends to click the link, which then leads to a malicious Web site that tries to infect the PC.

Twitter has suffered a rash of security related issues in the past weeks

Twitter has suffered a rash of security related issues in the past weeks. First it was a Phishing attack.

Phishing is the act of sending an e-mail to a user falsely claiming to be an established legitimate enterprise in an attempt to scam the user into surrendering private information that will be used for identity theft. The e-mail directs the user to visit a Web site where they are asked to update personal information, such as passwords and credit card, social security, and bank account numbers, that the legitimate organization already has. The Web site, however, is bogus and set up only to steal the user’s information (http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/P/phishing.html).

These attacks lead Twitter users to a drive-by malware site. A drive-by download or malware is a program that is automatically downloaded to your computer without your consent or even your knowledge.

Then hackers used Twitter’s own support tools to gain control of 33 member accounts -- including that of President-elect Barack Obama, CNN's Rick Sanchez, and pop star Britney Spears.

As a Twitter participant, I found this to be very interesting and as always I will increase my awareness while using Twitter or any online tool.

Source:
http://www.darkreading.com/security/attacks/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=212700635&subSection=Attacks/breaches

http://www.darkreading.com/security/attacks/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=212700834&subSection=Attacks/breaches