I have seen this over the past few days and on some verified accounts too. Probably a large 3rd party app was hacked or a phishing app was setup and is now using the permissions to tweet links. Make sure you clean out apps that you give permissions to.
Isn't this ultimately inevitable when twitter hands out mass access to its service to any 3rd party app that wants to self promote.
Every game nowadays has twitter integration, it even works in hacked games. So really, how long was it going to be before some 3rd party iPhone or Android, or even a popular pirated game became the source of spam attacks?
It's like leaving teenagers alone in the house just after you bought four kegs and two dozen boxes of liquor. If you're shocked they have a house party, it's shame on you not them.
This is shame on twitter for not doing their own due diligence to be able to shut these hacks down before it comes to public attention. Something as simple as putting a base 36 code that's registered to an app and prefixes any tweet from said app would have made this quick to block whilst identifying the source.
I mean it's not like someone would hack say a Tropico 4 crack and upload it to a peer farm to make it more popular than the original file, would they? Definitely they would.
Why? It's interesting that Twitter has become a vector for malware spread. PG discussed [1] how Twitter is in his mind a new protocol rather than just a service. This relates to that because it's using Twitter as a vector protocol. Therefore in my mind is quite acceptable news to hit HN.
7 comments
[ 2.6 ms ] story [ 26.6 ms ] threadAlternatively, instead of scrolling through RTs, people complaining, etc to discover the spam, add "weightpower" to the search -- https://twitter.com/search/realtime?q=%22How%20To%20Lose%202....
Every game nowadays has twitter integration, it even works in hacked games. So really, how long was it going to be before some 3rd party iPhone or Android, or even a popular pirated game became the source of spam attacks?
It's like leaving teenagers alone in the house just after you bought four kegs and two dozen boxes of liquor. If you're shocked they have a house party, it's shame on you not them.
This is shame on twitter for not doing their own due diligence to be able to shut these hacks down before it comes to public attention. Something as simple as putting a base 36 code that's registered to an app and prefixes any tweet from said app would have made this quick to block whilst identifying the source.
I mean it's not like someone would hack say a Tropico 4 crack and upload it to a peer farm to make it more popular than the original file, would they? Definitely they would.
[1]: http://paulgraham.com/twitter.html