Facebook Photo Theft

August 2008

Researcher reveals Twitter ‘follow’ bug. Attackers can exploit a bug in Twitter to force victims to follow the hacker’s account, a security researcher said Thursday. According to one researcher, the Twitter vulnerability could expose users to malware-hosting Web sites. “It can force people to follow you, which means all your twits will be showed in their Twitter home page -- including potentially malicious links,” he said. An attacker can currently leverage the bug by tricking users into clicking on a link on a malicious or hacked Web site. From that point, the victim’s Twitter account is automatically set to follow the attacker’s. On Twitter, “following” another means receiving all updates, or “tweets,” sent by the other user. Those tweets are collected and displayed on the following user’s Twitter home page, or on their phone or in their instant messaging client. This Twitter bug is the newer of a pair that the researcher has found on the service. Last week, he reported another vulnerability that allowed spammers and phishers to send e-mails that included links to malicious sites to other Twitter users. Twitter patched that flaw today.