Hackers Increasingly Using Twitter For Botnets

Trailrunner7 writes "Spammers aren't the only ones who have figured out that social networks like Twitter and Facebook are good for business. Sophisticated hackers conducting targeted attacks are also using the networks as a tool to manage malware installations on victims' networks. Mandiant's latest "M-Trends" report, released on Thursday, says that the company has observed an increasing number of so-called "Advanced Persistent Threats" that are hijacking legitimate social networks and Web based services, including Facebook, Google Chat and MSN as command and control networks for malware installations. The revelation is part of a larger trend that saw sophisticated attacks on commercial entities outstrip attacks on the networks of government agencies and defense industry players, Mandiant reported."

Re:Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

Companies are more aggressively blocking outbound traffic to services not needed by most users, such as IRC. Whereas egress HTTP/s is almost universally permitted.

Re:Why?

[John Hasler]

I don't understand what the incentive is to stop using IRC for command and control.

Getting through firewalls, I should imagine. Companies are likely to block IRC but they dare not block Twits-R-us and FaceSpace. Traffic there also seems less likely to trigger IDSs.