Worm wiles way into Twitter

Twitter is getting its fair share of attention for all the wrong reasons after being attacked by a computer worm four times over the last few days.

Twitter co-founder Biz Stone said in a company blog that the attackers initially created four accounts that rapidly spread the worm over the site on Saturday morning and compromised about 90 accounts before action was taken to secure those infected.

Later that same afternoon, the worm got its second wind and hit Twitter with more intensity, compromising nearly 100 accounts.

Another attack on Sunday morning forced the company to take drastic measures by deleting almost 10,000 tweets that were suspected to spread the worm without success as it went on to cause more havoc on a fourth attack on Sunday night.

Twitter maintains that the situation is now under control and that “no passwords, phone numbers, or other sensitive information was compromised as part of these attacks” with Stone reassuring users that they are “still reviewing all the details, cleaning up, and we remain on alert.”

It’s still left many wondering just relatively easy it was for one worm to infect so many accounts and exactly what security practices are put in place to protect users. Twitter will now be launching an investigation into the situation to evaluate their web coding practices.

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