Spammers harvesting emails from Twitter in real time!

As if you didn’t have enough things to worry your pretty heads about, spammers have figured out a simple email harvesting trick using Twitter. This is too easy. Straightforward queries for tweets containing, “gmail.com”, “email me at”, “contact me at” etc. reveal thousands of tweets that can be quickly scraped and harvested with a script.

TIP: Never reveal your email openly on Twitter. DM only!

Attackers, like marketers, are targeting brands better

I work in an ad agency, so I can tell you firsthand, marketers are getting damn good at targeting niche audiences and individuals. Unfortunately, so are online criminals. According to Cyveillance’s 2009 Cyber Intelligence report [PDF]:

“Cyveillance determined that during the second half of 2009, 399 brands were first-time targets of phishing attacks, nearly double the amount of first-time targets than in the first half of the year. Averaging more than 36,000 confirmed, unique attacks per month in the same period of 2009, phishing attacks continue to succeed, the report says.”

Points for style

While the Koobface gang (responsible for the Koobface botnet and several online pranks) may be somewhat nasty, you have to give them points for style and humor.