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Twitter Makes its Red Carpet Debut for Celebrities and Criminals

Barracuda Labs Launches New Security Information Portal, Reveals Only 21 Percent of Twitter Users are ‘True Twitter Users’

Campbell, Calif., March 10, 2010 – Barracuda Networks Inc. today released its Barracuda Labs 2009 Annual Report, revealing data from three areas: Twitter trends and tracking, Web threats and trends, and email spam and viruses. The report is available at the company’s newly launched security research portal at http://barracudalabs.com.

The report drills down into 2009’s fastest growing social networking application Twitter, and reviews growth drivers, usage trends and the overall Twitter crime rate. Barracuda Labs analyzed more than 19 million Twitter accounts, both legitimate and malicious, for frequency and content of tweets, user-to-user interactions, and each account’s overall activity level.

Key highlights from the report include:

Only 21 percent of Twitter users are actual True Twitter Users1.
Overall, users are becoming more active on Twitter.
49 percent of Twitter users, and 48 of the top 100 most followed Twitter users, joined during the Twitter Red Carpet Era2, indicating the significant impact celebrities have on the social networking landscape as they bring their real-world fans over to Twitter.
The Twitter growth rate spiked at 21.17 percent in April 2009 due to the Twitter Red Carpet Era.
During the Twitter Red Carpet Era, the Twitter Crime Rate3 increased 66 percent, and continued to escalate reaching 12 percent in October 2009, indicating one in eight accounts created was deemed to be malicious, suspicious or otherwise misused and subsequently suspended.

“Attackers continue to be as opportunistic as ever. As soon as the Twitter user base and activity levels increased, hackers were prepared with novel attacks to compromise users,” said Dr. Paul Judge, chief research officer at Barracuda Networks. “As social networking, and specifically Twitter, becomes more ingrained in everyday business, it is crucial to understand the nature of attacks happening on these sites, as well as how users and networks can be compromised.”

The report also provides email and Web security insights that include:

Email-borne malware increased by threefold in the second half of 2009.
Jewelry spam grew by tenfold during the year mirroring the rising price of gold
Web exploit kits, rogue anti-virus and search result poisoning were the most popular classes of Web attacks.

For the complete Barracuda Labs 2009 Annual Report and blog posting, please visit the company’s newly launched security portal, please visit http://barracudalabs.com.

Resources:

Download the Barracuda Labs 2009 Annual Report at http://barracudalabs.com/downloads/BarracudaLabs2009AnnualReport-FINAL.pdf
View the Barracuda Labs security research portal at http://BarracudaLabs.com
Access the Twitter’s Red Carpet Era blog post at http://blog.barracuda.com
Follow Barracuda Labs on Twitter at @barracudalabs

Footnotes:

‘True Twitter User’ is defined as a user that has at least (?) 10 followers, follows at least (?) 10 people, and has tweeted at least (?) 10 times.
‘Twitter Red Carpet Era’ occurred from November 2008 to April 2009, when many “celebrities” – from actors and athletes to musicians and politicians – started Twitter accounts and began promoting the service on a daily basis.
‘Twitter Crime Rate’ is defined as the percentage of accounts created per month that were eventually suspended for malicious or suspicious activity, or otherwise misused.

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