Twitter internet worm attack affects thousands of users

[InfoSec News <alerts () infosecnews org>]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2010/sep/21/twitter-internet-worm-hacking-attack

By Charles Arthur
guardian.co.uk
21 September 2010

Sarah Brown and Lord Sugar were among thousands of Twitter users who 
yesterday found themselves directing people to third-party sites, 
including hardcore pornography, as the messaging website fell prey to an 
"embarrassing" hacking attack discovered by a Japanese programmer and 
then exploited by a number of others.

At one point more than 100,000 people on the service were estimated to 
have been affected, while the owners – who are based on the US west 
coast -- were asleep.

Graham Cluley, a consultant with the online security company Sophos, 
said a rogue code or worm spread throughout the service "like someone 
had just thrown petrol on a fire".

The problem brought a renewed focus on the importance of Twitter, which 
restricts users to 140-character tweets, and has more than 100 million 
users around the world.

[...]

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