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"Aside from battling recent DDoS attacks, Twitter has also been hit with a variety of phishing, spam, and malware threats over the past few months.  The latest involves something known as a botnet posting obfuscated code as tweets to spread viruses.\nAt this point, you might be curious what exactly \u201Cobfuscated code\u201D and botnets might be.  Symantec explained the threat on their blog, and shows what to be on the lookout for via an account that his since been suspended by Twitter:\n\n\u201CObfuscated Twitter status messages are being used to send out new download links to malware that Symantec calls Downloader.Sninfs \u2026\n\u2026 Our investigation and analysis of Downloader.Sninfs is ongoing but has so far shown that it reads a specific Twitter.com RSS feed only once. The RSS feed is simply a text file similar to other RSS feeds found on other Internet sites. The RSS text file contains information as to where Downloader.Sninfs can find additional threats to download onto the compromised system. In this way the RSS file acts like a config file for the malware.\u201D\n\nHere's what the account attempting to spread the malicious code looked like:\n\n\n\n\nEssentially, the idea seems to be when a user consumes tweets with the code, it could be used to cause additional harm (by way of downloading new malware unbeknownst to the user) to those that have already been infected with Downloader.Sninfs.\nThus, it would seem that the best way to protect against this is to avoid downloading the malware in the first place by being skeptical of short links with dubious claims and avoiding new Twitter apps that ask for your username and password instead of Twitter OAuth.  Symantec also offers removal instructions if you think you've been infected."^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://mashable.com/2009/08/14/twitter-botnets/>