Kaspersky, an anti-virus and computer-security firm based in Moscow, created a tool called Krab Krawler, a program that searches through tweets. According to the company, ‘a quarter of Twitter messages contain a URL and half of those are generated by spammers and other Internet lowlifes.’

It seems that Twitter has been used by cybercriminals as the perfect malware delivery system. The ease of such use and purpose in Twitter facilitates these cybercriminals ‘to lure users with a quick tweet on a hot topic and a shortened URL that hides a shady website’s identity. One in 500 URLs posted on Twitter links to live malware.’

Through the Kaspersky Labs tool that began in August examining URLs circulating in tweets, it was found that ‘the spread of malware is aided by the popular use of shortened URLs on Twitter, which generally hide the real website address from users before they click on a link, preventing them from self-filtering links that appear to be dodgy.’

According to Costin Raiu, chief security expert at Kaspersky, ‘about half of those appear to be generated by spammers or by people with malicious intent.’ The very nature of Twitter makes ‘these URLs get spread quickly in re-tweets.’

The Krawler has so far scanned approximately 30 million URLs. It examines about 500,000 unique URLs a day. Kaspersky says that ‘about 26 percent of Twitter messages contain a URL. Of the URLs examined, between 100 and 1,000 a day are found to be hosting malware.’ About 31 percent of the malware found to spread via Twitter messages is the Trojan-Clicker.HRML.IFrame.ob.

Via Wired