Is Michael Mooney responsible for the worm that infected Twitter?
Michael Mooney, a 17 year old from Brooklyn, claimed responsibility for the worm attack. He stated that his reasons behind the attack were simply to alert Twitter to their site’s weaknesses, and to promote his website which is StalkDaily. It is fairly impressive that he came forward right away, indicating that it is likely that he had no malicious purposes in launching the attack. I suppose we shall see what comes of it. Sources: http://www.crn.
So here are some unanswered questions that you might want to hear from Twitter Worm StalkDaily creator you want to read. Thanks to NetDailyNews NND: Do you have Twitter? MM: I did, but they are now all suspended. NND: How long did it take you to create the MM: Around 2 hours. I created it last night. NND: And why did you create the worm? MM: Out of boredom. It was the middle of the night and I had nothing else better to do. I noticed the XSS vulnerability about a week back and decided to fiddle with it. NND: How was the code behind the worm found? MM: Well, when most of the users get infected with the “worm”, it auto updates their profile with the script for the javascript(XSS) and I guess from that someone decided to take a look into the input fields of Twitter and noticed something. NND: When do you plan to deactivate the worm? MM: As soon as they are able to sanitize their fields correctly, or promptly address me to remove it. NND: So Twitter has not yet contacted you about this? MM
Over the weekend, a self-replicating computer program, or worm, began to infect profiles on the social network. The worm was set up to promote a Twitter rival site, showing unwanted messages on infected user accounts. Michael Mooney, a 17-year-old US student, told the Associated Press he created the worm to promote his site. Mooney, who lives in Brooklyn, New York, said he wanted to expose vulnerabilities in Twitter. He told AP: “I really didn’t think it was going to get that much attention, but then I started to see all these stories about it and thought, ‘Oh, my God’.” The worm worked by encouraging users to click on a link to the rival Twitter site, called StalkDaily.com. Once the link was clicked, infected users themselves automatically began to send out messages to friends, promoting the site. No personal or sensitive information, such as passwords, was compromised in the attacks, according to Twitter, which has more than seven mi
Media darling Twitter was hit with a series of worms this weekend, a scam that was the brainchild of a bored 17-year-old. The micro-blogging site fell prey to four worm attacks between 2 AM Saturday Pacific time and early Monday morning, according to Twitter. PC Magazine received an e-mail from an individual identifying himself as Michael Mooney, a high school student from Brooklyn. Sources: http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2345187,00.
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