This article was published on June 27, 2011

Actor Simon Pegg claims Twitter account hacked. Spreads malware to 1.2 million followers.


Actor Simon Pegg claims Twitter account hacked. Spreads malware to 1.2 million followers.

British actor Simon Pegg claims his Twitter account has been hacked and used to spread malware to his 1.2 million followers, reports security firm Sophos.

The tweet in question asked Pegg’s twitter followers to download a screensaver of his latest movie “Paul”. Thousands of his followers did and many even thanked him after installing it. The actor’s account appears to have even retweeted many of the ‘thank you’s’, we can only assume the hacker stuck around and retweeted them. Those who had anti-virus protection installed however were informed of a Trojan horse being found.

Being a Windows screensaver, the file is not believed to be malicious to anyone not using Microsoft’s OS. Jokingly however, Pegg did have this to say though to Apple users:

Apparently the the virus CAN infect Apple products. It made my iPad shrink to the size of an iPhone. And vice versa. Wait, false alarm.

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