Technology is a double-edged sword. It can help us, entertain us and enhance communication; but with every upside, there is usually a downside, which often comes in the form of people looking to abuse or exploit the technology.
Twitter has become a great way for people to keep in touch. Both individuals and corporations are using this simple blog to engage in conversation with friends, family or consumers. Everything seemed to be going great until earlier this week when Jose Nazario of Arbor Networks discovered a number of Twitter accounts that were using 'tweets' to control a Botnet.
After digging into the Tweets, Jose realized they were actually Base64 encoded commands. It seems the Bot was programmed to receive the RSS feed of the Twitter account (along with other micro-blogging sites) and used these commands to carry out functions.
Further research suggests that the Bot is an info-stealer that has infected a few hundred PCs - mostly in Brazil.
While I certainly don't agree with or support malicious hacking, I have to admit that this is a pretty brilliant concept. I suspect that Twitter et al will be putting filters in place to shut down this type of activity in order to prevent it from going mainstream, but you gotta hand it to the hackers... they're pretty damn creative!
This just goes to show that no matter how harmless a technology may seem, someone will always find a way to exploit it.
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