Cape Town – Cybersecurity company Mimecast says criminals are exploiting Twitter's recently launched new subscription service where users pay $8 (about R140) to get the verification badge in an attempt to steal people’s personal information.
This follows after the South African born billionaire Elon Musk who owns the microblogging app, Twitter, said users will now pay $8 to get the verification badge.
Speaking to Newzroom Afrika, Mimecast cybersecurity expert, Brian Pinnock, said malicious criminals were relying on social media as users were vulnerable.
“We saw it during the pandemic and we are seeing it now.
“We actually saw this being exploited in various ways, for example we recently saw a pharmaceutical company being impersonated and as a result of this impersonation their share prices took a dip,” he said.
Pinnock says that these types of crimes sometimes target people who are public figures for example a politician, celebrities or journalists.
“Phishing and impersonating has become part of life, everyone has experienced it, impersonating attacks of various kinds and they’re normally quite easy to spot and sort out the basic ones.
“Unfortunately what we’re starting to see is a trend where attacks are becoming more sophisticated and much better orchestrated,” he said.
Pinnock revealed that one of the recent cases they have dealt with is that impersonators hijacked the website of an online famous retailer and repurposed it to look like a legitimate Twitter log in page to steal people's information.
“They are doing things in such a way that most of these tools that companies and individuals would use to try and pick things up would be ineffective and difficult to spot them,” he said.
He also said that fraudsters also send some of the phishing messages through mails or mail ascent to access people’s Twitter accounts and this might have a huge impact on Twitter safety stands and the protection of user's personal information.
Pinnock further said that Twitter user’s should get more protection as much as they can and at the same time more awareness programs have to be raised from a phishing or impersonating point of view.
“From the fishing point of view most attacks successful attacks wills share common traits and they get you to click on links and they get you to download mallard or get you to double sensitive information,” he added
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