Twitter cyberattacks should remind internet users not to open spam

August 7, 2009

After Twitter, Facebook and LiveJournal were hit by a distributed denial-of-service attack (DDoS) on Thursday, security experts say broadband internet users who don't protect their PCs are contributing to this growing plague on the web.

Yesterday morning, Twitter users found that they couldn't access the micro-blogging service and Facebook was slow. The cause of these blackouts was a DDoS, a type of cyberattack where hackers use networks of infected PCs, called botnets, to bombard a website with traffic that overwhelms the site.

By Friday, most service had been returned and users could go back to their Tweeting and Facebooking. But security experts warn that broadband internet users with lax security make it all too likely that other attacks like this will occur.

Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant at the internet security company Sophos, says users need to be aware of the consequences of responding to spam email, which is a major source of the computer viruses that infect PCs.

Cluley said in a recent report on spam that computer users should know by now that buying from spam is contributing to the problem.

The best way for web users to protect themselves - and the websites they love - is to stop spam, run anti-spam and anti-malware protection and ensure their PCs are regularly updated with security patches.

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