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

Would you trust StalkDaily?

[Joao]

Seriously, would you? The developer admits to infecting people's computers and accounts in order to advertise his services, and doesn't think he did anything wrong. How can anyone trust his services then?

For starters he should be forced to take down StalkDaily. I'm sure Tweeter lawyers are looking into this right now. And for once, I agree with such a move. /not a tweeter user

Re:Would you trust StalkDaily?

[Anonymous Coward]

Two issues with your post:
One, the dev did not infect anyone's computers. He wrote a small program, on the site, that would update the profile of anybody who saw one of the spam comments. For example, you visit a friend's page who has one of these comments (and therefore the code) and your profile is updated with a comment (and the code). The only "infection" was on the site, not the end users. Also, no accounts were hacked. Simply a case of instructing the visitor's browser to slyly update the visitor's status while looking at a different page. TFA states that there were no passwords, usernames, or anything else in the code.
Two, it's twitter.

Re:author found. Now what?

[oldhack]

Buy that man a beer. :-)

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

[SuperNothing307]

No offense, but having a good understanding of XSS attacks at 17 doesn't exactly equate to the mathematical and analytical abilities of Edward Dijkstra. I know I don't put myself anywhere near that level. In fact, I'd argue that the chances are well in favor of him doing something like this again, except worse, rather than his becoming someone who does something beneficial for the world. I mean, look at all the attention he has gotten for this. Imagine what would happen if he does something worse! Punish him now, make him understand the gravity of his actions.

Sounds Like A Publicity Stunt

[Dreadneck]

FTA:

StalkDaily.com is similar in design and features to Twitter. In addition to the features of Twitter, it also allows users to upload videos and photos. Through looking at the code behind Twitter, Mikeyy was able to produce a similar site to Twitter with some additional features. "I used my past knowledge to gain an insight on how Twitter worked and outputted to a user. Although both of the sites are coded in different languages I was able to give my site the same features as Twitter, while coding some of my own."

It sounds to me like the kid was trying to promote his Twitter knockoff site, but for some reason felt the need to do so by poking a stick in Twitter's eye. Makes me think the whole thing was a juvenile cry for attention. I knew a kid like that in high school. He was smart as could be but would do anything, no matter how socially unacceptable, to get attention.

I think the kid needs counseling and guidance and not a jail sentence.

Re:NoScript?

[morgan_greywolf]

You're not ignorant. You're right. In addition, recent Firefox browsers have built-in XSS blocking.

Samy is my hero

[The Real Toad King]

This sounds almost exactly like the Samy worm to me.

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

[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.

Re:NoScript?

[wannabgeek]

Yeah right! Every time some vi comes up, people start holding NoScript as a panacea. I use NoScript so I am aware of its advantages. But it's not a cure-all. There are so many sites (twitter in this case) which simply do not work without Javascript being enabled. So most of the NoScript users who use twitter through a browser will have Javascript enabled - by white listing it in NoScript. So, no sorry, NoScript is not a protection against this one.