Malware spread through Guy Kawasaki's Twitter account

Noted industry figure Guy Kawasaki was the apparent victim in a scheme to spread malware using his Twitter account. A link in his Twitter feed, purported to lead to a sex tape featuring Gossip Girl actress Leighton Meester, appeared as the result of leaving his feed open to "user generated" stories, he said.

But Kawasaki denied initial reports that his Twitter account had been hacked.

"Following the link would be a very bad idea because it will lead you to a malicious Web site designed to infect both Macs and PCs with a DNS-changing Trojan, which at the time of writing has low-to non-existent detection rates by security vendors (although Trend Micro customers would already have been protected from visiting the known malicious site using our Smart Protection Network)," Rik Ferguson of Trend Micro wrote.

"Don't forget, Twitter isn't scanning the links which it points people to," he added. "It's your job to make sure you're protected every time you click on a link."

Kawasaki's account wasn't the only one redistributing the malicious link; the same tweet was sent from other lower-profile accounts.