Monday, April 13, 2009

Twitter and worms

Over the weekend the popular micro-blogging site Twitter was infested with a worm that took users to another site, updated their status and set them to follow @onedegrees.

Michael Mooney (mickeyy), a 17 year-old living in Winnfield, Louisiana, the creator of the website StalkDaily, admitted to being the creator of the StalkDaily worm and spoke to Scott Campbell of Net News Daily about his "creation."

In the interview, Mr. Mooney said he noticed a vulnerability in Twitter and decided to "fiddle" with it. When asked if he was concerned about how his actions affected others, Mr. Mooney refused to acknowledge that he had inconvenienced anyone. Instead, Mr. Mooney claimed he was doing Twitter a public service by exposing the vulnerability of the site.

When asked if he would be "releasing" any more worms, Mr. Mooney said: "I'm not sure, it depends on if Twitter sanitizes their fields."

Mr. Campbell then asked Mr. Mooney if he realized he could be arrested for what he had done. His response? "Yes, I'm aware. I'm not worried though. I know it could land me in jail."

His casual attitude toward the matter is similar to the attitudes I see in some of my younger clients - they aren't mature enough to look at what the consequences of today's actions might be down the road.

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