Large twitter account hacks may be used to spread malware
The recent hacking of Katy Perry's Twitter account, which has over 89m followers, has provoked speculation on the motivations behind such attacks. There could be many reasons for hacking high-profile accounts, such as wishing to advance a political cause, or just to discredit the owner of the account. Hacking a large account could also be attractive for the purposes of spreading malware. Jason Jordaan, the principal forensic scientist at DFIR Labs, says, “The hacker could post a tweet with a link, posing as Katy Perry, telling fans to download her latest song. This link could contain malware and her fans would download it because they trust the information she posts on her account." He expects this trend to increase as social media increases its dominance.

Hacked Twitter accounts can be used to advance a political cause, abuse others, or discredit the account owner.

Hacking into a Twitter account with millions of followers could give a hacker the chance to push an agenda or spread malware. Instead, someone chose to hack into the largest account on the platform and spew profanities.

This morning, a hacker took over Katy Perry's Twitter account, which has over 89 million followers. The tweets have since been deleted, but screenshots show a series of insults to other celebrities or no one in particular.

The hacker appears to be a Twitter user based in Romania called @sw4ylol, as one of the compromised tweets read: "haha follow @sw4ylol, #hackersgannahack."

Neither Twitter nor Perry have made a public statement about the event yet.

Arthur Goldstuck, MD of World Wide Worx, says the possibilities for the reason behind the attack are endless, but "the intention of the hacker/s was probably to show that he/she/they could pull off something like this".

"It also says something about poor password management on the part of Katy Perry or her handlers. We've seen some prominent South Africans also claim their accounts were hacked," says Goldstuck.

Celebrities are often targets for such attacks because of their large following.

Pop stars dominate the top 10 most followed accounts on Twitter. Perry has the most, followed by Justin Bieber with 82 million and then Taylor Swift with just under 78 million. US president Barak Obama features fourth with 72 million.

Both Bieber and Swift have had their Twitter accounts hacked.

Compromise implications

"The intention of most Twitter account hacks is to use seemingly legitimate accounts to send spam messages to as wide an audience as possible," says Goldstuck.

However, he says, "in the case of such a powerful account, aside from bragging rights, it can be used to advance a political cause, to abuse others, or simply to discredit the account owner".

Goldstuck says this places "an obligation on social networks to keep an eye on their biggest accounts to enhance protection of what would be very tempting targets of hackers".

Jason Jordaan, principal forensic scientist at DFIR Labs, says hacking such a large account could have sinister implications, such as spreading malware.

"The hacker could post a tweet with a link, posing as Katy Perry, telling her fans to go download her latest song," says Jordaan.

"This link could contain malware and her fans would download it because they trust the information she posts on her account."

Easy hacking

Jordaan says to a large extent, compromising a Twitter account comes down to password security, but he says any system is hackable.

Doing a Google search for 'How to hack a Twitter account' gives multiple results from Web sites such as twitter-hack.net and hacktwitteraccount.com, with headlines like 'Hack an account in three easy steps' or 'Twitter password hacker for free online'.

Many of the Web sites listed offer tools that only require the user to paste the Twitter URL of the intended hack and then it does the rest of the work. Some promise to produce a password in less than five minutes.

However, Jordaan says a lot of these Web sites are just a way for hackers "to infect malware on bad guys who want to do bad things".

Jordaan says we can expect more accounts like this to be compromised as social media dominates the Internet-scape.