Russian hackers hit Twitter with automated hashtags tweets
Dec 11, 2011
Russian hackers hit Twitter with automated hashtags tweets Russian hackers have taken aim at Twitter in recent days to hamper communication between opposition activists as outrage against the conduct of last week's general elections grows. The pro-government messages were generated by thousands of Twitter accounts that had little activity beforehand. The hashtag is #триумфальная (Triumfalnaya), the name of the square where many protesters gathered. Maxim Goncharov, a senior threat researcher at Trend Micro, observed that " if you currently check this hash tag on twitter you'll see a flood of 5-7 identical tweets from accounts that have been inactive for month and that only had 10-20 tweets before this day. To this point those hacked accounts have already posted 10-20 more tweets in just one hour. " Brian Krebs, the author of the blog Krebs on Security, noted that the 'bot accounts he lists them here appear to follow a single account called @master_boot , as well as following e...