Remember Tuesday’s Twitter bug that flooded users’ timelines with spam posts and afflicted user computers with popups, links to spam and porn websites, and other malicious-yet-harmless computer annoyances?  Well, the security firm Netcraft has been hard at work to find out the source of the exploit, and it has been discovered in the person of Pearce Delphin, a 17-year-old Australian teen who lives with his parents in Melbourne, Australia.  Pearce Delphin is the person who first discovered that Twitter could be hacked via JavaScript coding.  Now, Pearce is hoping Twitter won’t bring the hammer down on him, as he was one of the first users of Twitter down-under!

“I did it merely to see if it could be done … that JavaScript really could be executed within a tweet,” Delphin told AFP via email.  “At the time of posting the tweet, I had no idea it was going to take off how it did.  I just hadn’t even considered it.  After that, it seems like some of my followers realised the power of this vulnerability, and within a matter of minutes scripts had taken over my timeline.”

As far as Delphin knows, nobody used their 140 characters of JavaScript coding to steal anyone’s usernames and passwords, though it could have potentially been done.  Delphin admits to knowing about the security flaw for months before working on his exploit.  “I discovered a vulnerability, I didn’t create a self-replicating worm.  As far as I know, that isn’t technically illegal,” the teen added.  “Hopefully I won’t get in trouble!”

Tags: Twitter, Twitter exploit, Twitter worm, teenager found Twitter vulnerability, Pearce Delphin, Australian teenager develops Twitter hack, Melbourne, Australia, mouseover bug, Netcraft

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