Someone needs to get a serious grip on password security and Twitter’s (News - Alert) hacking vulnerability. It’s been a busy week in terms of accounts getting hacked, and it’s not over yet.
Burger King’s Twitter account was the first this week to meet the hackers, with a false announcement on the micro-blogging site that the fast food chain and home of the Whopper had been sold to Big Mac owner McDonalds.
Next up was Jeep, which had its Twitter account tweeting some vulgar content for about 80 minutes before Chrysler regained control and got “back in the driver’s seat.”
Interesting day here at BURGER KING®, but we're back! Welcome to our new followers. Hope you all stick around!
— BurgerKing (@BurgerKing) February 19, 2013
Hacking: Definitely not a #Jeep thing. We’re back in the driver’s seat!
— Jeep (@Jeep) February 19, 2013
@jeep Glad everything is back to normal.
— BurgerKing (@BurgerKing) February 19, 2013
Donald Trump also says his Twitter account was hacked, with an unknown hacker tweeting out Lil Wayne lyrics.
My Twitter has been seriously hacked--- and we are looking for the perpetrators.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 21, 2013
Twitter will soon be irrelevant if lowlifes are so easily able to hack into accounts.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 21, 2013
Trump’s latter tweet may be a little extreme, but he has a point. If Twitter continues to be vulnerable to as many hacks as we saw this week, it will quickly become an undesired platform.
Now, NBC.com is the latest victim to online hackers as security experts caution that visitors to the site may have been hit by what is called a "drive-by-download attack," in which is malicious software, rumored to be RedKit, is downloaded onto their computers simply by visiting the website.
Ronald Prins of Fox-IT was tweeting about NBC.com spreading malware earlier today. HitmanPro found two exploit links on the NBC website; one on the main default entry page and one on an assets wrapper link. The HitmanPro officials found at least two different Citadel Trojans (which is used for banking fraud and cyber-espionage) MD5 hashes of the droppers. Facebook (News - Alert) has been preventing posts to NBC.com and other websites like Late Night Show Jimmy Fallon are serving some of the same links found in NBC.com.