Twitter Scrambles To Block Worms

Twitter has patched a flaw in its website that was being exploited to pump out pop-up messages and links to porn sites. Initially, users only had to move their mouse over a message containing a link – not click it – to open it in the browser.

The code was spread by worms, self-replicating, malicious pieces of code. Thousands of users were caught out by the flaw. ”The exploit is fully patched,” Twitter said on its status blog. People using third-party Twitter software – such as Tweetdeck – were unaffected by the problem.

The flaw comes just one week after Twitter rolled out a major redesign of its site.