Social media phisherfolk cast their lines for Fortune 500 suits

Fortune 500 companies are increasingly the target of social media phishing attacks, with nearly two per cent of all tweets containing URLs being directed at firms with the intention of stealing customer data, according to research.

Security company CyberInt researched 25 Fortune 500 companies over the last four years, examining a total of 800,000 tweets and 50,000 Facebook comments and posts directed at organisations.

It found that Twitter is the primary social media platform for malicious URLS, with 95 per cent transmitted through the site and only five per cent in Facebook posts and comments.

Of those, 98 per cent were used for phishing schemes and the remaining two per cent were attempts at malware injections.

Elad Ben Meir, veep at CyberInt, said the increasing use of social media as a means of phishing for user information is a reaction to better security of organisations' own systems, such as firewalls. He said: “Companies now need to extend their security well beyond their current security perimeters. ®