Twitter Gets Slammed By the StalkDaily XSS Worm

CurtMonash writes "Twitter was hit Saturday by a worm that caused victims' accounts to tweet favorably about the StalkDaily website. Infection occurred when one went to the profile page of a compromised account, and was largely spread by the kind of follower spam more commonly used by multi-level marketers. Apparently the worm was an XSS attack, exploiting a vulnerability created in a recent Twitter update that introduced support for OAuth, and it was created by the 17-year-old owner of the StalkDaily website. More information can be found in the comment thread to a Network World post I put up detailing the attack, or in the post itself. By evening, Twitter claimed to have closed the security hole."

Comments

To hire or to jail, that is the question

[BadAnalogyGuy]

A 17 year old is old enough to understand the ramifications of his actions to a reasonable extent. He no doubt understood that releasing a worm like that would be met with an unfavorable reaction. But he did it anyway. In this sense, he is a potential menace to the Internet.

However, he is still in his formative years. His abilities could be nurtured in productive directions and we could have the next Edward Dijkstra in the making.

So do we punish him and turn him to the Dark Side? Or do we show him love and respect and turn him? There is still good in him. I can feel it.

Re:To hire or to jail, that is the question

[moderatorrater]

RT: @rs79 "I say anything that slows down the spread of those fucking annoying twitter people is a good thing and he should be awarded a medal.

Tweet this, bitch."

Clearly he should be made to

[Colin Smith]

Go and manually run anti virus software on every infected PC.

 

Re:author found. Now what?

[berend botje]

Hang him, I'd say.

Re:I saw this.

[sakdoctor]

You have used the verb "tweeted".
Ninjas have been dispatched to your location, to make sure you don't do it again.

Re:author found. Now what?

[jrothwell97]

Drop him into the jaws of the Great Whale of Fail, while forcing him to follow Robert Scoble and Bill O'Reilly.

Ob. Penny Arcade

[slushdork]

Le Twittre - pretty much says it all...

Re:author found. Now what?

[morgan_greywolf]

I tried, but they closed down the Microsoft Pub.

Spell Twitter

[wfstanle]

Remember, you can't spell "Twitter" without using the word "twit".

Re:author found. Now what?

[Ihmhi]

Don't worry, the Linux pub is better. The beer is free, and you can get a copy of the beer's recipe anytime you like!

Re:author found. Now what?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, but if you ask for a beer the bartender calls you a N00B and if you ask what beers are available he tells you to RTFMenu.