Twitter Using Google Blacklist To Filter Malicious Links

Twitter has quietly started using a Google blacklist of suspected phishing and malware pages to filter malicious URLs leading to known malware sites.

Twitter hasn’t announced it, but F-Secure’s chief research officer Mikko Hypponen revealed how it was starting to filter tweets that linked to known malware sites.

According to this blog post, users are given a warning message when they attempt to click on a link that leads to a blacklisted site.

He later confirmed – on Twitter – that the microblogging site was using Google Safe Browsing API, an experimental API that allows client applications to check URLs against an updated Google blacklist.

Twitter has become a bigger target for hackers taking advantage of its explosion in popularity.

This Easter, Twitter suffered four separate worm attacks that encouraged users to click on a link which infected them and made them automatically send out messages to friends with the same link.

Twitter has not replied to request for comment by time of writing.

By Asavin Wattanajantra from www.itpro.co.uk