While scanning Wired.com this weekend, I came across an article that’s scary enough to fit right in with Halloween. Most security
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And while Twitter and URL shortening services aren’t dangerous in and of themselves, they present a wonderful tool for blackhats. In this case, Wired published the findings of a study from computer security firm, Kaspersky.
You can read the full article here, but the top-level findings are, in a word, scary.
As many as one in every 500 web addresses posted on Twitter lead to sites hosting malware, according to researchers at Kaspersky Labs who have deployed a tool that examines URLs circulating in tweets.
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.
1 in 500 doesn’t sound so scary to you? Check out what that .2% really means after the jump.
Of the URLs examined, between 100 and 1,000 a day are found to be hosting malware, the company said
And that’s just from the half million Twitter links that Kaspersky’s Krab Krawler checks each day. The larger issue for many, including some at CNET, is the security (or lack thereof) that’s inherent in URL shorteners, which prevent users from seeing their ultimate destination before they click. And with more than 200 URL shorteners flooding the market and Twitter not budging on its 140 character limit, we haven’t heard the last of this.
Do you click on shortened URLs on Twitter? How about if they’re used elsewhere (in an email or blog)? If so, how do you protect yourself from the risk of malware? Leave us a comment after the beep.
