Twitter sex spammers cashed in on Pope's resignation

Pope Benedict XVI may not know —much less approve of— it, but his decision to resign by the end of February may have given sex spammers on Twitter an unexpected boost.

 

Shortly after news of Benedict XVI's planned resignation broke out, spam messages appeared on Twitter with the hashtag #pope but whose content was totally different.

 

Most of those messages featured images of "young women in a state of undress," according to a blog post by security vendor Sophos.

 

"What is happening here is what we see every day on Twitter - whether there is a Papal resignation or not. Spammers scoop up the hottest trending topics on Twitter and use the popular phrases to sprinkle amongst their tweets - in the hope that social media users who are following a particular meme or subject will click on their link rather than a legitimate one," Sophos said.

 

Earlier Monday, the Vatican said Benedict XVI was resigning effective Feb. 28, with the Pope saying he lacks strength to govern the Church due to his age.

 

Sophos said the Twitter spam is likely the work of automated bots under the control of a spammer "who may have hundreds or thousands of bogus accounts at his beck and call."

 

"These are hardly the most sophisticated examples of spam in the world, and at the moment appear to primarily be designed to make money through affiliate links. But it's easy to imagine how cybercriminals can exploit interest in hot breaking news stories like this in order to drive traffic to poisoned webpages infected with malware or phishing sites," it said.

 

Sophos advised netizens to report such messages to Twitter so they can shut down the accounts sending out the spam. — TJD, GMA News