Monday, September 27, 2010

Twitter Hit with Second Worm in a Week, Spread Via 'WTF' Link



Days after a site update unleashed a Twitter cross-scripting attack, the micro-blogging site was again hit with a bug that spread via questionable links.
"A malicious link is making the rounds that will post a tweet to your account when clicked on," Twitter wrote on its status blogSunday afternoon.
The offending messages appeared on a user's Twitter feed with "WTF:" followed by a link. If you clicked on that link, you were taken to a blank page, but behind the scenes, the worm would post vulgar messages on your account that discussed, well, sex involving goats.
"Clicking on the WTF link would take you to a webpage which contained some trivial code which used a CSRF (cross-site request forgery) technique to automatically post from the visitor's Twitter account," according to a blog post from Sophos's Graham Cluley. "All the user sees if they visit the link is a blank page, but behind the scenes it has sent messages to Twitter to post from your account."
The message did not spread if you were not signed into your Twitter account at the time. Cluley suggested the attack spread so quickly because people were eager to find out what might warrant a "WTF" label.
Twitter said Sunday evening that it had fixed the exploit and was in the process of removing the offending tweets, but Cluley said that attack "highlighted an obvious security problem in Twitter which must be addressed as a matter of urgency - otherwise we can expect further (perhaps more dangerous) attacks."
Source: pcworld.com

29 comments:

  1. Heard about that, crazy to think that such a big site would still have huge flaws like that.
    but then again, i don't use twitter, so...

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  2. i dont even use twitter anyways :{


    neat blog man, follow me back!

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  3. haha pretty cool
    glad i only use twitter for this
    thx for the comment
    followd!

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  4. Twitter? again?
    I hope they will be able to strengthen their security, because twice in a row, that is a bit much...

    F/S!

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  5. thats turible

    if your a poker player follow my blog :)

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  6. I love how newspapers call this the "Twitter virus", when it's just an XSS hole.

    It's not like it's going to ruin your computer, it might confuse some of your followers though xD

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  7. This is why I'm glad I don't use twitter, it's so stupid! Anyways. Cool blog man. Check mine out and follow back if you like it.

    thatguy00.blogspot.com

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  8. Thanks for the heads up. I'll spread the word to avoid twitter.

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  9. will this be the end of twitter, the world can only hope

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  10. follow back.

    http://electronpsy.blogspot.com/

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  11. It's scary how one security flaw on a website can affect millions of people.

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  12. Haha..that's kind of funny. Well actually not to the innocence victims like Grandma.

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  13. Stupid worms ruining my twitter.

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  14. classic twitter, they need to check there security more often and better

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  15. lol, i love it when social networking sites get owned. people keep blowing em way outa proportions.

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  16. Jesus, another one? You would think they would somehow strengthen their security...

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  17. Added benefit of not using social networking sites, don't have to worry about them being the prime target for exploiters.

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