Twitter mouseover security flaw hits thousands

Twitter came under attack on Tuesday as hackers exploited a security flaw to wreak havoc on the microblogging service.Computer security firms said thousands of users, or more, were affected by the bug, which appears to send out or "re-tweet" messages simply by rolling over an infected link with the computer mouse.Those hit by the bug included Sarah Brown, the wife of the former British prime minister who has over one million followers on Twitter, and White House press secretary Robert Gibbs.

Twitter came under attack on Tuesday as hackers exploited a security flaw to wreak havoc on the microblogging service.Computer security firms said thousands of users, or more, were affected by the bug, which automatically sent out or "re-tweeted" messages from a user's account simply by rolling over an infected link with the computer mouse.The San Francisco-based Twitter said on its status blog that it had patched the security problem at 6:50 am California time (1350 GMT).

Twitter came under attack on Tuesday as hackers exploited a security flaw to wreak havoc on the microblogging service.Computer security firms said thousands of users, or more, were affected by the bug, which appears to send out or "re-tweet" messages simply by rolling over an infected link with the computer mouse.Those hit by the bug included Sarah Brown, the wife of the former British prime minister who has over one million followers on Twitter, and White House press secretary Robert Gibbs.

Twitter apologized to its millions of users on Tuesday after hackers exploited a security hole and wreaked havoc on the microblogging service.Bob Lord, a member of Twitter's security team, said no account information was compromised in the attack, dubbed the "mouseover bug" because it was spread by users scrolling over infected links with a computer mouse.The bug opened pop-up windows in Web browsers, linked some users to porn websites, or automatically generated the short messages known as "tweets" from a user's account.

Third-party sites would pop up even when users didn't click on a link; some users were forced to resend messages posted by others.

Dawson College, the school that expelled 20-year-old student Ahmed Al-Khabaz after he discovered a vulnerability in the college’s data security has responded to the public and online outcry after the story was reported in the National Post. Al-Khabaz, 20, became persona non grata at Dawson after discovering a major security flaw in the school’s computer system while working on a class project.

A security flaw on Twitter allowed hackers to redirect users to third party sites containing malicious codes, affecting thousands of accounts on the popular micro-blogging service on Tuesday.

Thousands of Twitter users have been hit by an apparent security flaw that can cause pornographic content to appear on the site unintentionally.