Twitter users hit by Osama scam

Close to three weeks after Osama bin Laden's death was reported worldwide on 2 May, scams claiming otherwise are still doing the rounds in cyberspace.

The latest scam, which has hit micro-blogging website Twitter, uses fake CNN news links claiming Osama is still alive to draw users to a phishing page.

Tweets like ''omgg osama is alive!!! cnn confirmed that he's still out there :(( .'', ''I cant BELIEVE osama is still alive - CNN confirmed he around stillll :O.'' and ''OMG CNN confirmed that they found Osama alive still ! ! !'' are doing the rounds on Twitter.

These tweets lead to a bit.ly redirector that takes the user to a convincing phishing page designed to extract the user's Twitter account details, a security provider said. A user who enters the details is then taken to a YouTube video of a real CNN YouTube video about anti-American protesters in Pakistan claiming Osama is alive.

Twitter trend-tracking service, Trendistic recorded this scam as being one per cent of the volume of all tweets some 8 hours ago.

Web security provider, Websense said that the tweets are being posted at the rate of around 200 per minute and the phishing page could be successfully harvesting Twitter account details and then tweeting on their behalf, thereby spreading the links.