Outbreak: Blackhole malware attack spreading on Twitter using “It’s you on photo?” disguise

If you are a Twitter user please be very cautious of clicking on links that claim you are pictured in an online photo.

Thousands of malicious links are being spammed out, targeting innocent users of the micro-blogging network.

The links point to Russian webpages that ultimately attempt to infect your Windows PC using the notorious Blackhole exploit kit.

Here’s what the dangerous tweets look like:

As you can probably see in the following screengrab, there is a pattern to the dangerous tweets.

@[Username] It’s you on photo? [Domain]/#[Username].html

So, if the cybercriminals were trying to infect me via my Twitter account, it would be a message saying

@gcluley It’s you on photo? [Domain]/#gcluley.html

(In the above examples and screenshots I’m hiding the domain name, to avoid anyone visiting a dangerous URL)…

Read more in my article on the Naked Security website.

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Graham Cluley •   @gcluley

Graham Cluley is a veteran of the cybersecurity industry, having worked for a number of security companies since the early 1990s when he wrote the first ever version of Dr Solomon's Anti-Virus Toolkit for Windows. Now an independent analyst, he regularly makes media appearances and is an international public speaker on the topic of cybersecurity, hackers, and online privacy. Follow him on Twitter, Mastodon, Threads, Bluesky, or drop him an email.