Even one successful hacked tweet from the account of a trusted user can have serious repercussions, especially if the bogus tweet is "retweeted" by followers to still more people. Typically, between 10 percent and 20 percent of people will click a link sent by a trusted source.
The illicit Twitter trade is being conducted on Russian-language, members-only cybercriminal forums, Raiu says. No aggregate numbers of stolen accounts are available. But based on the fact that accounts are offered in batches of 1,000, it's reasonable to conclude that tens of thousands or more accounts might be for sale worldwide, Raiu says. Twitter has more than 75 million members, of which about 10 million to 15 million send out tweets regularly.
