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Banned Lady Gaga video attack spreads on Twitter via rogue app

Watch out for tweets about a banned Lady Gaga video, currently spreading across the Twitter network.

The tweets are being posted by rogue applications, that users are allowing to access their profiles in the belief that they will get to view a prohibited video of Lady Gaga

Tweet promoting banned Lady Gaga video

VIDEO PROHIBIDO LADY GAGA banned [LINK] @shakira @ladygaga como ganar dinero facil

(Please note that the precise wording can vary)

If you make the mistake of clicking on the link you are taken to a fake YouTube webpage.

Fake YouTube page

Of course, you believe that you’re going to watch a banned video of Lady Gaga so you might very well click on the play button.

Doing so, however, asks you to grant permission to a third party app which wants to connect with your Twitter account.

Rogue Twitter application

Don’t, whatever you do, give it permission to continue. Because if you do, your account can now be accessed by third parties – who will be able to post messages in your name to all of your followers.

Hopefully the fact that the messages we have seen so far have all been in Spanish may reduce the impact of this particular attack.

Interestingly, it seems that Lady Gaga herself has been having trouble with these Twitter hackers.

The eccentric songstress, who has more followers on Twitter than anyone else in the world, posted a message yesterday saying:

Whoever is hacking my Twitter must answer to 10 million monsters and Twitter police. #Don'tMakeMeCallTheApostles

Lady Gaga@ladygaga
Lady Gaga

Whoever is hacking my Twitter must answer to 10 million monsters and Twitter police. #Don‘tMakeMeCallTheApostles

Although the singer quickly deleted the rogue tweets that had upset her so much from her page, I was able to discover them cached elsewhere on the net:

TAROT de shakira [LINK] clarividente de @shakira #horoscopo ganar dinero navegando

and

VIDEO PROHIBIDO LADY GAGA @ladygaga [LINK] ganar dinero navegando

The bit.ly links used in the messages posted to Lady Gaga’s Twitter page linked to the same fake YouTube page, and were created by the same person who appears to be behind the rogue application attack.

Lady GagaIs it possible that Lady Gaga, or the staff who manage her Twitter account, fell for the scam themselves? And that’s why the rogue message appeared on Lady Gaga’s Twitter page?

Lady Gaga has over 9.6 million followers on Twitter, making her the most popular person on the network (yes, beating even Justin Bieber..) and a prize goal for any scammer who wants their scammy spammy links to be spread to as wide an audience as possible.

If you were unfortunate enough to grant a rogue applications access to your Twitter account, revoke its rights immediately by going to the Twitter website and visiting Settings/Connections and revoking the offending app’s rights.

Don’t make it easy for scammers to make money in this way, and always exercise caution about which third party apps you allow to connect with your social networking accounts.

If you’re on Twitter and want to learn more about threats, be sure to follow Naked Security’s team of writers.

Source :- http://nakedsecurity.sophos.com

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Lady Gaga Donates $750K To Zynga’s Japan Earthquake Relief Campaign

Image representing Zynga as depicted in CrunchBase

Image via CrunchBase

As we wrote a few weeks ago, Zynga launched a campaign with Save The Children to raise money via in-game donations in Zynga games like FrontierVille, FarmVille and CityVille for the relief efforts in Japan following the massive earthquake and tsunami a few weeks ago. Today, the social gaming giant is announcing that Lady Gaga has donated $750,000, through the sales of her Japan Prayer Bracelets, to Zynga’s fundraising initiative. She is also donating another $750,000 to the American Red Cross to support relief efforts in Japan.

And in the past two weeks, Zynga players alone have raised more than $2.5 million for Save the Children’s Japan Earthquake Tsunami Children in Emergency Fund and other causes. In a release issued by the pop singer and Zynga, Gaga said “I’m inspired that my little monsters banded together to help those affected by the terrible tragedy…What Zynga’s players have done for the cause is equally inspiring, and I’m thrilled to partner with them to raise money that will go to Save the Children and the American Red Cross.”

Through Zynga games including Café World, CityVille, FrontierVille, FarmVille, Words With Friends, Vampire Wars, YoVille and Zynga Poker, more than 250 million players had the opportunity to donate 100 percent of the purchase price of newly created virtual items to the fundraising efforts. Via Credits, Facebook donated money generated through the purchases to support the initiative.

The Japan fundraising initiative isn’t the first charitable campaign for Zynga. Since October 2009, hundreds of thousands of players have raised more than $10 million dollars for international nonprofits through Zynga.org. And Zynga was able to raise millions for the relief efforts in Haiti last year.

Lady Gaga recently sat down with Google’s Marissa Mayer for a candid talk about tech, music and YouTube.

Source -: Lady Gaga Donates $750K To Zynga’s Japan Earthquake Relief Campaign (techcrunch.com)

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