Twitter flaw pumps out spam links

[Bald Bouncer]

A flaw in the website of micro-blogging service Twitter is being used to pump out pop-up messages and links to porn sites.

Users only have to move their mouse over the link - not click it - to open it in the browser.

Thousands of Twitter accounts have so far posted messages exploiting the flaw including Sarah Brown, the wife of former Prime Minister Gordon Brown.

The malicious links look like a random URL and contain the code "onmouseover".

This command - written in a programming language called Javascript - automatically directs users to another website, some of which contain pornography.

"There is no legitimate reason to tweet Javascript," Graham Cluley, a researcher at security firm Sophos, told BBC News.

He said that it looked like the initial vulnerability was exploited as a prank by users, but was now being spread by a worm, a self-replicating and malicious piece of code.

"Simply being logged into Twitter and viewing these pages could mean that your own Twitter account could be hacked," said Mr Cluley.

Until the flaw is fixed, users should use a third-party Twitter client - such as TweetDeck - rather than the Twitter.com website, he advised.

"Don't use the website," he said.

It is not the first time the service has suffered an attack.

In April 2009, another worm spread links to a rival site, again showing unwanted messages on infected user accounts.

Mr Cluley said that Twitter needs "much tighter control" over what users can contain in a tweet to prevent similar problems in the future.

Twitter was not immediately available for comment.

Source

[DJAd]

"Among the reported victims was the wife of the former Prime Minister Gordon Brown, who unwittingly sent out a link containing malicious code that sent followers to a Japanese hard-core porn site."

Buhahahahahahahaha!!

[-AMO-]

Twitter posted on their blog about the exploit too..

All about the "onMouseOver" incident

The short story: This morning at 2:54 am PDT Twitter was notified of a security exploit that surfaced about a half hour before that, and we immediately went to work on fixing it. By 7:00 am PDT, the primary issue was solved. And, by 9:15 am PDT, a more minor but related issue tied to hovercards was also fixed.

The longer story: The security exploit that caused problems this morning Pacific time was caused by cross-site scripting (XSS). Cross-site scripting is the practice of placing code from an untrusted website into another one. In this case, users submitted javascript code as plain text into a Tweet that could be executed in the browser of another user.

We discovered and patched this issue last month. However, a recent site update (unrelated to new Twitter) unknowingly resurfaced it.

Early this morning, a user noticed the security hole and took advantage of it on Twitter.com. First, someone created an account that exploited the issue by turning tweets different colors and causing a pop-up box with text to appear when someone hovered over the link in the Tweet. This is why folks are referring to this an “onMouseOver” flaw -- the exploit occurred when someone moused over a link.

Other users took this one step further and added code that caused people to retweet the original Tweet without their knowledge.

This exploit affected Twitter.com and did not impact our mobile web site or our mobile applications. The vast majority of exploits related to this incident fell under the prank or promotional categories. Users may still see strange retweets in their timelines caused by the exploit. However, we are not aware of any issues related to it that would cause harm to computers or their accounts. And, there is no need to change passwords because user account information was not compromised through this exploit.

We’re not only focused on quickly resolving exploits when they surface but also on identifying possible vulnerabilities beforehand. This issue is now resolved. We apologize to those who may have encountered it.

Source
http://blog.twitter.com/2010/09/all-...-incident.html