Twitter to broaden advert business via newly acquired ad network MoPub

Social network Twitter has reportedly announced that it will broaden its advertising business by enabling Twitter marketers to promote and distribute mobile apps through its recently acquired mobile advertising network MoPub.

According to a blog post from Twitter, the MoPub Marketplace reaches over a billion unique devices and serves over 130 billion ads within Android and iOS apps every month, PC World reported.

Meanwhile, raising concerns about possible system abuse, James Lyne, Global Head of Security Research at Sophos said that it isn't clear from the details available so far how app validation will be done and whether there is an opportunity for malicious providers to create ads and pay for distribution of their applications.

He said that though there may be checks and balances, but it will take some time before it could be analyzed how robust they were.

Meanwhile, Tim Erlin, director of IT security and risk strategy at Tripwire said that these kinds of attacks are most successful when a pseudo-trusted Twitter account with many thousands of followers is compromised because users are already habituated to click.

He added that at that point, whether the link is to install an app or to a malicious website, the risk for compromise is the same.