Twitter Used to Control Botnet

Twitter might be revolutionizing social communication, but it’s also providing a handy way for hackers and virus makers to issue commands once their creations are out in the wild. Symantec has determined that a trojan horse called “Downloader.Sninfs” was using the @upd4te Twitter account to send obfuscated commands to infected machines. Twitter has since disabled the account in question.

While it’s hardly the only site that malware makers could use, the social messaging service’s massive growth make it a logical place from which to widely distribute obfuscated information. Such use raises the possibility that Twitter could be applied for a number of similar, far less insidious purposes, however, such as by intelligence services as a supplement or replacement to number stations.