Just at a time when Twitter has been hitting the headlines for all the right reasons it has been revealed that the network was the target of a malicious worm at the weekend which caused havoc. Mikey Mooney, a 17 year old programmer, has already admitted that he was the creator of the so-called StalkDaily worm which caused havoc amongst thousands of Twitter account.
He used the worm to access thousands of Twitter accounts, sending out around 10,000 bogus Tweets promoting his own website. At this point in time it is unclear as to what action the owners of Twitter will take but more alarmingly, even though the worm has now been flushed out of the system, it does show weaknesses in the network. This is a system which is now used on a daily basis by literally thousands of businesses and personal users although whether the worm attack will be a short-term phenomenon or cause long-term damage remains to be seen.
Even though Twitter has issued a number of instructions to clean infected accounts of the worm there are concerns it could strike again if just one account is left infected. It seems that for every plus point there are downsides to the Internet which do not take long to push to the surface. |
|
Reader Comments: 0
