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Jun 25, 2009

Venture capitalist Guy Kawasaki automated Twitter feed spreads malware

Venture capitalist Guy Kawasaki got more than he bargained for from an automated feed he set up on his Twitter account.

Some of Kawasaki's more than 139,000 Twitter followers noticed something strange when they saw a particular non-VC-related tweet sent from his account on Tuesday.

The update advertised a sexy video of "Gossip Girl" star Leighton Meester and had a link leading to a site where, if the visitor clicked to view the video (and ostensibly download a necessary codec), a Trojan called OSX/Jahlav-C for the Mac OS would be installed instead, Graham Cluley wrote on his blog on Wednesday for antivirus vendor Sophos.

Kawasaki told The Wall Street Journal his account is set up to redistribute updates from NowPublic, a user-generated news site.

The auto-published tweet was from a NowPublic feed that was not moderated by the site, NowPublic co-founder Michael Tippett told the WSJ later.

"Auto-feeds on Twitter can be quite risky," Michael Argast, a security analyst for Sophos, told CNET News.

Kawasaki's account wasn't the only one redistributing the malicious link; the same tweet was sent from other lower-profile accounts.
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