For a long time we've seen spammers, phishers and malware authors concealing their advertising pitches, scams and malicious payloads by pretending to be a message from a social network, whether it claims to originate from Facebook, Twitter or even MySpace.
Here's one of the latest we caught today, claiming to come from Twitter.
Twitter-er!
You have 2 direct message from Twitter Administration
[LINK]The Twitter Administration
The link, of course, doesn't go where it claims to go. You'll only find out where that link is really going if you click on it, or hover your mouse over the link.
So, what do you think it's going to be? Phish, malware or link to a spam website?
It's clearly up to no good (does Twitter ever sign its messages "The Twitter Administration"?), but what's the purpose of it.
It's not much of a game I'm afraid, as you simply can't tell just by viewing the screenshot I took.
You'll have to take my word for it that if you click on the link you are taken to a webpage selling pharmaceutical drugs such as Viagra and Cialis. Yes, this is another campaign backed by a Canadian Pharmacy affiliate.
As long as you don't actually buy any of the drugs on offer, this is probably the least harmful option. I'd prefer to visit an online store than have my Twitter password phished, or my computer infected with a Trojan horse. Just as long as I don't hand over my credit card details or risk my personal health by taking medications without the thumbs-up from my doctor.
Take care of your computer's health by keeping your defences up-to-date, and remain aware of the latest threats by reading sites like Naked Security or following me on Twitter.
Follow @gcluley
i see a few things wrong
1) Twitter Never Signs their emails
2) Twitter Never Calls you "Twitter-er" They Call you by your username
and 3) there needs to be messages
You'll never see a "You have 2 DMs" messages, because DMs don't stack.
Not having a Twitter account guarantees me 99.98% protection from this (and a >25% of making me momentarily smile).