Twitter fights off computer worm

"On a weekend normally reserved for bunnies, a worm took centre stage," Biz Stone said in a post on the official blog of the San Francisco-based start-up.

Stone said the self-replicating computer worm, which resulted in users of the service receiving and sending unwanted messages, had not caused any damage.

"Please note that no passwords, phone numbers, or other sensitive information was compromised as part of these attacks," he said.

Stone said Twitter had come under attack on four occasions from the worm, which the online technology news agency CNET said was created by a 17-year-old New York hacker.

"All told, we identified and deleted almost 10 000 tweets (messages) that could have continued to spread the worm," Stone said.

He said the worm was similar to the Samy worm which recently attacked social network MySpace.

"We will conduct a full review of the weekend activities. Everything from how it happened, how we reacted, and preventative measures will be covered," Stone said.

Twitter, which allows users to pepper one another with messages of 140 characters or less, has seen a dizzying surge in popularity since it was launched in August 2006, but has been unable so far to generate revenue.

Source: AFP

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