Worm sends Twitter in a tizzy!

Twitter is not all that safe after all! A worm developed by a Norwegian hacker exposed the security vulnerabilities of Twitter as it bombarded users with pop-ups and links to various porn sites.

Twitter is not all that safe after all! A worm developed by a Norwegian hacker exposed the security vulnerabilities of Twitter as it bombarded users with pop-ups and links to various porn sites.



Interestingly, the hacker announced his achievement with a tweet but also clarified that he was only highlighting a flaw in the system.



"I simply wanted to exploit the hole without doing any 'real' harm," he told BBC News.



Incidentally other hackers piggy-backed on his idea and created disruptive programmes which linked users to various pornographic sites. "It was only a matter of time before more serious worms started," he said.

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The disruptive worm's first victim was wife of former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, Sarah Brown. Apparently, her 1.1 million followers were sent a link to a Japanese pornographic site.



Sarah, later in the day, tweeted: "Don't touch the earlier tweet - this twitter feed has something very odd going on!"

White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs fell victim to the flaw. "My Twitter went haywire," he tweeted. "Absolutely no clue why it sent that message or even what it is. ... Paging the tech guys."

The flaw only worked on Twitter's older site, rather than the new version.

Twitter has more than 160 million users worldwide.