Twitter ‘antibodies’ help kill worms

Social-networking services have a natural defense against hardcore hackers.

Social-networking services like Facebook and Twitter have a built-in defense against the most hardcore of hackers, according to one security expert. InfoWorld reports, Sean Sullivan of F-Secure says the high activity levels of the social network sites causes attacks to rise and fall so quickly, that serious cyber criminals aren’t interested in attacking them. This week’s Twitter worm showed that the users themselves acted as an antibody, speeding up discovery and patching of the vulnerability. The whole attack was over in 90 minutes. But Sullivan says, cyber criminals intent on stealing money want to avoid rapid, widespread detection.

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