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Twitter Bug Locks Out Many Users

TechCrunch and ZDNet are among the many sources to report that many users are having trouble right now signing in to Twitter, and that the company is working right now to fix the glitch. As ZDNet describes the problem, According to Twitter's server response at the time of writing, most of 2015 has happened, and we are heading into a bright new 2016 in a couple of days time. Querying Twitter's HTTP response headers at https://twitter.com returns a time stamp dated one year into the future: "date: Mon, 29 Dec 2015 02:09:37 UTC". Consequently, users of Twitter's popular Tweetdeck application have experienced seeing every incoming tweet appear with a time stamp reporting the tweet to be from 365 days ago. At the same time that Twitter's servers began returning the incorrect date, some users of Twitter's official Android app were logged out of the service, and unable to log in again via the app. Users of some third-party Twitter applications have also reported being locked out of their apps.

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  1. But 2014-12-29 is 2015 Week 1 Day 1 (ISO Standard) by IcyWolfy · · Score: 5, Informative

    They are using ISO Year for the Date header, for some reason. (the last 3 years wouldn't have been affected)
    As Mon Dec 29, 2014, is ISO year 2015, Week 1, Day 1.

    The Last-Modified header is showing the correct date and time.
    The Date: header is not.

    Last-Modified: Mon, 29 Dec 2014 00:59:30 GMT
    Date: Mon, 29 Dec 2015 00:59:30 UTC

    So, they're using the "G" rather than "Y" designator for displaying the date (if C based)
    As all the other fields are correct, but they are using the ISO Year, rather than Calendar Year.
    It's a subtle issue, but a rather silly one.

    And clients, can probably see that either a) Mon Dec 29, 2015 doesn't exist (invaild date); or is b) Ignore monday, and 2015-12-09 is too far out of range for a new session token.