Twitter – Malware through time

Twitter is celebrating its 5th birthday this week. Since its inception in July of 2006 Twitter has grown to become an essential part of many people’s daily lives in just 140 characters. Twitter has also spawned multiple malware campaigns and continues to be a successful avenue of attack to this day.

Security on Twitter has had an eventful history, even considering its relatively young age. There have been all sorts of different types of attacks from trending topics to hacked admins, to account hijacks, just to name a few. In fact, due to Twitter’s popularity and its constant security lapses, the Federal Trade Commission actually brought charges against Twitter in 2010. As a result Twitter had to adopt a number of new security policies, and includes such security options as default SSL connectivity and OAUTH support for external Twitter clients.

Take a look at the graphic below for a visual timeline of some of the more noteworthy events in Twitter’s colorful security history: