The Twitter Website Is Under Attack [Security]

Twitter is seriously screwed up this present day, attributable to a new Javascript exploit that’s currently spreading like wildfire across the service. Visitors of Twitter’s website are inadvertently retweeting spam and porn to their followers, just by hovering over tweets.

The exploit takes good thing about the Javascript function onMouseOver, enticing users with colorful blocks of text-” rainbow tweets” -and then retweeting those messages automatically when the block is moused over. Occasionally the links launch pop up windows, in others users are being directed to spam and porn sites.

Sarah Brown, wife of former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, was hit with the exploit. Earlier, her page was displaying a big letter ” h” and redirecting users to a Japanese porn site.

Reader Mike sent a video of the exploit in action. As soon as he moves his cursor from the toolbar to the body of the Twitter.com page, it retweets the exploit and attempts to send an instantaneous Message.

Third party apps are safe from the bug, but because the exploit spreads by users merely hovering over links, visiting the Twitter website at once almost guarantees that you just’ll inadvertently retweet probably the most messages. [ Sophos ]

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This post is tagged: british prime minister, british prime minister gordon brown, japanese porn, javascript function, prime minister gordon brown