Online micro-blogging website Twitter.com on Tuesday urged its users to immediately reset their account passwords following massive phishing attacks, which has stolen thousands of usernames and passwords through fake BitTorrent sites.
The announcement came after Twitter technicians discovered plans of massive phishing activity to millions of user accounts in their website. The technicians noticed a sudden surge in the number of followers to a couple of accounts in the last five days that they have monitored the activity.
Del Harvey, the director for Twitter’s trust and safety division, said that they have not seen an attack like the ones they have discovered, saying that Torrent-based attacks are somewhat surprising to them.
“These Torrent sites are not exactly new to us. But this is the first time that we’ve seen an attack originating from this type of vector. We believe that in the past years, someone has been creating torrent websites that will require login passwords and has created forums that is specifically setup for the torrent usage,” Harvey said.
“We also believe that these people will then sell the collected login passwords to other people who are looking for well-crafted download site of their own,” he added.
Harvey then pointed to the masterplan behind the said websites, saying that the “patient” cybercriminal has waited for a long time for the forums to get more popular and then used the exploited login details of those who have signed up.
“Most of the users were reportedly redirected to websites requesting their passwords and other log-in information. The login passwords and usernames will then be used to third-party websites like Twitter,” he said.
Harvey said that they will inform their users about the recent attacks, adding that they will soon come up with the complete list of forums that has been identified as an attack source.