{"id":33595,"date":"2014-07-22T11:41:16","date_gmt":"2014-07-22T11:41:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/4cd.e16.myftpupload.com\/?p=33595"},"modified":"2014-07-22T13:18:52","modified_gmt":"2014-07-22T13:18:52","slug":"mh17-twitter-and-facebook-spammers-exploit-crash","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/?p=33595","title":{"rendered":"MH17: Twitter and Facebook spammers exploit crash"},"content":{"rendered":"

Scammers are using the MH17 disaster in east Ukraine to spread objectionable links, online security experts have warned.<\/p>\n

A link to a pornographic website disguised as a video of the Malaysia Airlines crash was posted on a Facebook page dedicated to one victim.<\/p>\n

Many tweets have been posted that appeared to report the disaster, but actually included spam links.<\/p>\n

One expert said the firms should take more responsibility for removing them.<\/p>\n

Online security specialist Richard Cox said that it was common for spammers to exploit anything being discussed by a lot of people online.<\/p>\n

“It is a fairly rapid and predictable response by the individuals behind it. They are all to make money. There is no compassion involved,” he said.<\/p>\n

Mr Cox, who is also chief information officer for anti-spam body Spamhaus, added that the perpetrators might be using software that could detect what was being posted regularly and repost using the same hashtags.<\/p>\n

\"Liam<\/div>\n
A Facebook apparently dedicated to Liam Sweeney was set up, hosting spam.<\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

A Facebook community page dedicated to Liam Sweeney, one of the 298 people victims, uses his name and picture.<\/p>\n

Its sole post is a link entitled: “Video Camera Caught the moment plane MH17 Crash over Ukraine”.<\/p>\n

However, the link takes users to a pornographic website. Moreover, anyone who clicks on it is then asked to call a phone number in order to verify that they are aged 18 or older.<\/p>\n

“Whoever it is now has your caller ID and you could get a lot of nuisance calls,” said Mr Cox.<\/p>\n

“This is all based on a somewhat tasteless video that probably doesn’t exist and is presented in a completely tasteless way.”<\/p>\n

He added that Facebook should have deleted the site.<\/p>\n

Facebook subsequently did so after it was brought to its attention by the BBC. A spokesman said: “We are disabling these profiles as soon as we are made aware of them.<\/p>\n

“We encourage people to block those responsible and report suspicious behaviour to our team of experts via our reporting buttons so that we can quickly take the appropriate action.”<\/p>\n

Twitter abuse<\/strong><\/p>\n

On Friday 18 July, security firm TrendMicro reported that it had detected tweets pretending to be about MH17, but which also bore spam links.<\/p>\n

Rik Ferguson, the firm’s vice president of security research, said that its research suggested that the pages were most likely being used to gather clicks to generate advertising revenue.<\/p>\n

He said the tactic could also be used to force pages higher up search engine rankings.<\/p>\n

“It looks like a lot of people are retweeting what they are doing,” he said.<\/p>\n

Twitter’s rules state: “User abuse and technical abuse are not tolerated on Twitter.com, and may result in permanent suspension.<\/p>\n

“Any accounts engaging in the activities specified below may be subject to permanent suspension: If you post multiple unrelated updates to a topic using #, trending or popular topic, or promoted trend.”<\/p>\n

TrendMicro said that many previous disasters had been exploited in a similar way and that it expected to see further exploitation of the MH17 crash.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Source: BBC<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Scammers are using the MH17 disaster in east Ukraine to spread objectionable links, online security experts have warned. A link to a pornographic website disguised as a video of the Malaysia Airlines crash was posted on a Facebook page dedicated to one victim. Many tweets have been posted that appeared to report the disaster, but […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":33597,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[18,1745,1733],"class_list":["post-33595","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-dr-akwasi-osei","tag-krobo","tag-protests"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33595","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=33595"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33595\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/33597"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=33595"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=33595"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=33595"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}