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VIRTUALISATION Twitter gets its worm four times
VIRTUALISATION Twitter gets its worm four times | Twitter gets its worm four times |
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| by Stan Beer | |
| Tuesday, 14 April 2009 | |
  
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The first wave hit at 2AM on Saturday, compromising "about 90 accounts". That kept the Twitter team busy until 11AM. "Later in the afternoon, a second wave of the worm hit Twitter and this time it was much more intense. We got back to work and the situation was contained. About 100 accounts were compromised. Again, we identified and secured the accounts. We also identified and deleted malicious content that could work to further spread the worm," said Biz Stone. The first two attacks were followed by another two on Sunday morning and Sunday night. "Again, we secured the accounts that had been compromised and removed any content that might help spread the worm. All told, we identified and deleted almost 10,000 tweets that could have continued to spread the worm," said Biz Stone. A 17 year old hacker name Michael Mooney has reportedly taken "credit" for the attack saying that he created the worm because he was bored and wanted to draw attention to his website. Mooney reportedly used an XSS (cross site scripting) vulnerability in Twitter to inject the worm Mooney was also reported as saying his intention was not to cause too much damage but to give developers an insight into the problems they faced and to promote himself. He also is reported to have said that he realises that he may get arrested for his activity. As far as Twitter and its management is concerned, criminal prosecution may well be on the cards. Referring to the MySpace Samy case, Biz Stone reminded readers on his blog that MySpace filed a lawsuit against the virus creator which resulted in a felony charge and sentencing. "Twitter takes security very seriously and we will be following up on all fronts," Biz Stone said. |
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