It’s safe to return to Twitter. The microblogging service has successfully blocked the virus that crippled Twitter.com earlier today. So how was Twitter brought to its knees? Through an amateur coding error reported to the company over a month ago.The Twitter bug that allowed today’s viruses was originally discovered by Japanese developer Masato Kinugawa on August 14, according to a translation of Kinugawa’s Twitter stream and a story in the Guardian. A week ago, Kinugawa discovered the flaw was still around in the new version of Twitter.com the company has been rolling out to select users. Last night, Kinugawa set up a test Twitter account, @rainbowtwtr, to illustrate how he could use the vulnerability to change the color of tweets.
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://talkingpointsmemo.com/?p=120838