Spam strongly attacks social networks

According to Symantec Depository Service (Symantec Hosted Services), spam distribution containing shortened URL has peaked 23.4 billion spam in a day (about 18% of total spam) in 2010 , significantly increased compared with 9% last year. Meanwhile, some well-known social networking sites like Twitter are using this type of shortened URL format that contains many risks.

Twitter is the fastest updated news source for millions of Internet users when news is spread online. While the majority of individual users use this service, businesses must regularly train their employees, who are also Twitter users, to ensure that the source of information must be reliable, but on Twitter, it's hard to identify.

Like many other social networking sites, Twitter is also the target of malicious code operations. Attackers select pages of tweets in this social network about a common topic, or a shortened URL. The original URL link will be replaced by another completely shortened URL, leading users to a malicious website.

It is difficult for users to recognize malicious links, because it is often an official website, but has been hacked, and has become a tool to perform drive-by download attacks ( Automatically download malicious programs without knowing). Therefore, installing security software into your computer or updating software and system patches regularly will help reduce the risk of becoming victims of these attacks.

Twitter has implemented several basic remedies to prevent such attacks. One method used is to allow users to "expand" the shortened link addresses to indicate which links point to which pages without having to click on that link. Measures are still being implemented to ensure that all shortened URLs are scalable. Along with that, the world's number one social network Facebook has just implemented a series of new security measures to ensure safety for users of this service.