Twitter patches porn site worm flaw

Twitter has today updated its website to patch a flaw that was allowing spammers to cause multiple pop-ups with links to porn websites.

The code has beens spread by worms and thousands of people around the world have been caught out.  The self-replicating worm exploited a cross scripting (XSS) vulnerability and used just a small amount of Javascript to automatically direct Twitter website users to another website.

The vulnerability appeared to users as a coloured block that users only had to mouse-over to activate.

It only affected people directly using the website Twitter.com and not other third-party software such as TweetDeck or applications on smartphones.

The worm was initially created by Magnus Holm who “”simply wanted to exploit the hole without doing any ‘real’ harm” according to BBC News.  “It started off as ‘ha, no way this is going to work’.”  The flaw was later identified by others however after he used it and was then used for more unwanted purposes.

Mr Holm said he’d seen the worm passed around in at least 200,000 tweets.

In April 2009 Twitter suffered another attack that spread links to a rival website.  Twitter security chief Bob Lord said today This issue is now resolved. We apologise to those who may have encountered it.”

Related Articles:

Author: Mike Halsey MVP, Tuesday September 21, 2010 -
Tags:porn, Security, twitter, worm

Responses so far:

1. Lady Bouvier says:

   September 23, 2010 at 9:27 pm

   The two most influential people in the Twitter nation already overtaking all the world’s media output are both under 17 and don’t yet have any chest hair.
   Imagine what could happen once this generation hits college and starts to discover social activism…

   http://scallywagandvagabond.com/2010/09/australian-hacker-behind-worldwide-twitter-porn-chaos/

   Reply
2. grow twitter followers says:

   November 19, 2010 at 4:47 pm

   Yes, I also fool with this worm with loads of unwanted popups. It’s happy to hear this news:-)

   Reply