Twitter, a cybercriminal's perch?

There has been a recent increase in the use of trending topics on Twitter as a way to infect users with malware. This malware campaign uses automatically generated Twitter accounts to post links to sites that infect the visitor's computer with malware. The fake accounts use trend topics to advertise their posts and reach other users. TinyURL links hide the source URL, perhaps compounded with redirection methods. The latest attack campaigns did not use a static list of cautionary keywords. Although this type of malicious activity is not new to Twitter, the concern here is that such campaigns are increasing in frequency and becoming harder to detect due to an expanded range of topics and keyword choices.