Financial malware hijacking Twitter accounts

Researchers have discovered another active spamming campaign targeting Twitter users.

“The malware launches a Man-in-the-Browser attack through the browser of infected PCs, gaining access to the victim’s Twitter account to create malicious tweets. The malware, which has been used as a financial malware to gain access to user credentials and target their financial transactions, now has a new goal: to spread malware using the online social networking service,” warns Trusteer.

“The attack is carried out by injecting Javascript code into the victim’s Twitter account page. The malware collects the user’s authentication token, which enables it to make authorized calls to Twitter’s APIs, and then posts new, malicious tweets on behalf of the victim.”

The spamming campaign is currently targeting Dutch users, but it’s likely to spread widely. The messages that lure users to the sites serving the malware are a collection of true and false news and claims concerning a number of well-known Dutch and other famous individuals.

The researchers say that they have not been able to inspect the URLs spread via the spam messages, but that they likely lead to pages outfitted with exploit kits that download the malware to the user’s computer.

Once on the computer, the malware starts the aforementioned MitM attack, and continues the infection circle.