Website of bin Laden Twitter witness hacked, Websense says

Sohaib Athar (@ReallyVirtual) live-tweeted about hearing helicopters and explosions in his Abbottabad neighborhood six hours before bin Laden’s death was announced. Now, hackers are apparently targeting his website.

That’s the claim coming from security vendor Websense, anyway.

The vendor sent me an email that said the following:

A key media source on bin Laden’s death, Sohaib Athar (@ReallyVirtual), live-tweeted about hearing helicopters and explosions in Abbottabad six hours before bin Laden’s death was announced. Athar links to his website from his Twitter account and has become a major source of media interest and the public seeking more information on the news.

Websense Security Labs has discovered the website belonging to Athar has been compromised by hackers and leads to the Blackhole exploit kit. Hackers will immediately take advantage of notoriety and the huge trends in searches in an attempt to infect massive amounts of computer users.

Says Patrik Runald, senior manager of security research for Websense Security Labs, “Cybercriminals are constantly exploiting where the masses go, and news on Osama bin Laden’s death is no exception. We wanted to warn everyone looking for news on Osama bin Laden’s death to be cautious when clicking on new links. Make no mistake—hackers are going to go after websites, like @ReallyVirtual’s, along with search engine results to prey on visitors looking for more information. Compromises on breaking news items are also very dangerous to organizations because employees who are searching online can potentially put an organization at risk for exploit and data loss.”

This sort of thing was to be expected. Security experts have warned about social engineering scams wrapped in newspaper headlines almost from the moment bin Laden’s death was announced.

For more on the scams that have been identified thus far, check out this story from my colleague, Joan Goodchild.

–Bill Brenner