Sophos, an IT security and data protection firm, warns Twitter users to be cautious following the discovery of a widely spread malware attack on the micro blogging site. Malicious links, claiming to be an online photo of the Twitter user, are at present being spammed out across the social network. The links point to Russian web pages that ultimately attempt to infect Windows PCs using the Blackhole exploit kit.

At present the dangerous tweets say “It’s you on photo?” or “It’s about you?” followed by a link. Thankfully, all these tweets are easily dismissed as being a fake. However, the cybercriminals behind the campaign can change the wording used in the dangerous tweets at any time.

“If you see tweets like this, please do not click on them. There isn’t a photo of you waiting at the end of the link – and the accounts that are spreading the messages have either been compromised by hackers or have been created by hackers with the purpose of spreading the dangerous links,” says Graham Cluley, Senior Technology Consultant of Sophos.