Twitter Attack

One of the social media applications widely used by citizens and federal employees alike -- Twitter -- is the latest to be infected by a virus, which raises the question: How is the Obama administration going to leverage Web 2.0 technologies, as promised, while locking down sensitive and private information?

News articles and blogs surfaced this past weekend about a virus infecting Twitter accounts. Tweets encouraged users to click a link to see a "Best Video," which actually brought them to a Web site with a Russain domain that downloads malicious software and, ironically, displays a fake security warning that tells people to buy a fake anti-spyware solution.

Initial reports speculated that the virus was a worm, much like the Koobface worm that infected users of other social networking sites, including Facebook and MySpace and enabled attackers to masquerade as legitimate Facebook users, infect more computers, and execute commands on infected machines. But later reports claim that attacks were not actually "spreading" from computer to computer, but rather targeting the victims of an earlier phishing scheme.

On Saturday, Twitter temporarily suspended accounts affected by the best video exploit for cleanup. A posting on the site said that no personal information was compromised as a result of the attack.

Another day, another attack on a social networking site, which leaves President Obama with a predicament. His plans to use these applications in government to encourage collaboration and enable a transparent and open agenda are both admirable and ambitious, but it also seems to test his own plans to strengthen cybersecurity. IT experts will tell you security and collaborative technologies don't need to be mutually exclusive, but whether those same people are working with federal agencies to roll out these Web 2.0 initiatives properly remains to be seen.