Blackhole exploit kits had created waves last year as millions of Wordpress blogs hosted on GoDaddy, HostGator, and Network Solutions were infected with malware, which ultimately led to web pages that served the executable codes that could steal the identity, credit card credentials, and confidential information from the victim's system... And, the terror of Blackhole Exploit kits continues as the new threats on social media sites like Facebook and Twitter continue to trick thousands of Internet users on daily basis.

New Twitter Malware Warning Scam

The latest attack is being carried out through the Twitter Malware warning scam, which displays a warning message like "It's you in photo" or "It's about you?" - and the innocent users end up clicking on the link and visiting a web page that redirects them to an IP address, which in turn redirects to a .cu.cc domain that loads the executable code... Ultimately, the victim is taken to a .su domain that serves the Blackhole exploit kit, and starts stealing personal information, credit card/bank details, and all the precious information from the victim's system.

Although the details of this new Twitter scam aren't too clear, it's pretty obvious that the scam is all about tricking users to click on a malicious link by simply claiming the message to be about them. Therefore, a word of caution would be not to click on random Twitter links at the first place.

Moreover, we've seen Twitter accounts of celebs like Justin Bieber, Kesha, and Ashton Kutcher getting frequently hacked, photos of celebs like Scarlett Johansson getting leaked through her own cell phone, and many high level security breaches in past, with some of them involving disclosure of millions of LinkedIn passwords, 150 million Visa & Master Card credit card numbers being compromised, and millions of Yahoo passwords getting hacked over the past 1 year.

This goes to show you that the hackers are getting smarter day-by-day, and carrying out frequent network penetration testing and other checks on your network can help in ensuring that you stay away from any unforeseen trouble.

Facebook Isn't Safe Either

Links on your Facebook wall may not be safe, and it has been discovered that at least 4-5% of the links tend to be either malicious or promotional spam on an average. This clearly goes to show that it's just not Twitter, and Wordpress, but Facebook, and even LinkedIn are not safe either.

I was in fact shocked to see that the latest Norton anti-virus also has an opting of scanning all the links on your Facebook, and this gave me an idea of the kind of attacks on Facebook users.
Just a couple of months ago, millions of LinkedIn passwords were compromised, and the company took quite some time to bring things under control, and requested the users to reset their passwords on two occasions during the fix.

This also makes you wonder when the social media giants are struggling to survive the onslaught of the hackers, then how do you manage to stay safe? Well, there's something positive as well as negative in it. Mostly, hackers won't target you unless you've lot of name and fame in the industry, but if you're attacked, then you may not have the same kind of support that the likes of LinkedIn have got at their disposal. In any case, you should try to do your bit to prevent any possible attacks on your network.

Furthermore, you must not only offer secure web hosting services to your customers but also malware removal help during any such unforeseen events, rather than trying to put the blame and responsibility on the customers.