Watch out! That 'tweet' can turn your comp into a zombie

Twitter is being used to infect thousands of systems to carry out cyber attacks

Remote Control

The attackers may send you an email asking you to download a popular programme. If you click on the web link in the mail, your computer could be infected and a remote users will be able to misuse your system without your knowledge.

The criminals are preparing an army of such computers that will act on their command sent out through Twitter.

The army of computers may also be used to propagate a particular ideology or to carry out spam attacks. The hackers may also attack the defence website through these zombie computers.

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Cyber criminals is have found a new platform to launch attacks on millions of computers in cyber space. They are now using micro-blogging website Twitter to control and send orders to zombie computers infected by virus or malware, says a research report by Kaspersky Laboratories, a computer security solutions firm.

According to David Jacoby, a senior officials of the company, a hacker tool named Twitter Builder, which is used to form botnets or Zombie computers, is being propagated through several famous social networking websites.

The trouble may land in your email box with some catchy subject line, such as ' twittterdownloader', which is commonly known to most Internet user's computers is infected by a Trojan that then begins to act on the commands given to it through an account created on Twitter. The Kaspersky report also says that the malicious software tool infecting as an attachment with chat conversations.

It expert Sahir Hidayatullah from MIEL e-security said: " when hackers want to take control of a computer,, they are not always interested in the data of that individual system. Sometimes, they just want to carry out cyber crimes through the infected system. This way, the criminals can make an army of thousands of computers to act on their orders, without the knowledge of the systems; owners."

Hidayatullah said the hackers might also place orders through tweets and then carry out spam attack in cyber space. " Also, the army of computers could be misused for propagating their ideology and carry out attacks on defence websites," Hidayatullah pointed out.

Initially, botnets or zombie computers were controlled by cyber criminals through chat rooms. But now cyber criminals have started using websites like Twitter to run their activities. The users could never have any idea about the activities his infected computer is carrying out till his internet protocol address is detected by an agency investigating an illegal activity.

According to experts , the Zombie computers are also being sold to other groups of cyber criminals who need large number of computers to carry out illegal activities online. According to an estimate, the criminals charge anything between $10 and $200 for a thousands zombies.

Vijay Mukhi, advisory to Mumbai police on cyber safety, said the botnet attacks are being carried out from international locations. " We are not able to catch the culprits because there is little international cooperation as far as cyber crimes are concerned."