A Twitter account can be used as the command centre for harnessing a botnet of virus-infected computers, security firms Arbor Networks and Symantec have reported.
In a blog post on Friday, Symantec analyst Peter Coogan wrote that researchers found an account, @upd4t3, which was tweeting out links to download a piece malware called Downloader.Sninfs. The account has since been suspended by Twitter.
Downloader.Sninfs, also known as Infostealer.Bancos, is a Trojan that uses the guise of a Brazilian banking site to collect passwords and related personal information from infected computers.
Security on Twitter is front and centre right now, as the micro-blogging site was completely downed by a distributed denial-of-service attack recently, which was targeting a Georgian political blogger. While other services such as Facebook and the Google-owned Blogger were also hit by the attack, Twitter was the only one to suffer a full-out, hours-long outage, and it called into question just how secure the service really is.
However, in this case, the Twittering botnet does not necessarily highlight a vulnerability that would be unique to Twitter.
"Although Twitter.com has been used in this instance, there are plenty of alternative sites on the internet that could also be used as a similar medium of communication," Coogan wrote.
