In an effort to raise awareness of browser security flaws, one researcher wants to post a vulnerability every day that shows the soft underside of the Fail Whale.

Thomas Claburn, Editor at Large, Enterprise Mobility

June 15, 2009

2 Min Read

For Twitter users, the month of living dangerously begins in two weeks. Come July, Israeli security researcher Aviv Raff plans to publish a new Twitter security vulnerability every day, for the duration of the month.

Raff participated in the "Month of Browser Bugs" initiative in July 2006. It was an effort to raise awareness of browser security flaws. Now he wants to shine the spotlight on Twitter with the "Month of Twitter Bugs."

"Each day I will publish a new vulnerability in a third-party Twitter service on the twitpwn.com Web site," Raff explained on his blog. "As those vulnerabilities can be exploited to create a Twitter worm, I'm going to give the third-party service provider and Twitter at least 24 hours heads-up before I publish the vulnerability."

Raff says that while he has more than enough vulnerabilities to publish one every day in July, he nonetheless welcomes submissions.

Twitter did not respond to a request for comment.

Raff, in a previous blog post, observed that Twitter's most significant security problem is its API, which can be abused to create worms.

In May, he created proof-of-concept code that exploits a vulnerability in the Web site twitpic.com, which uses the Twitter API.

Twitter has weathered several security problems already this year. In April, a Twitter worm created by a 17-year-old infected at least 190 accounts and generated almost 10,000 spam tweets.

Also in April, a Twitter administrative account was hacked. The hacker who claimed responsibility posted screenshots of several celebrity Twitter accounts accessed through the compromised administrative account.

There have been other incidents too: In March, about 750 Twitter accounts were hacked and used to send spam. And in January, 33 Twitter accounts associated with celebrities were hacked through a brute-force password attack.

In response to the April account hack, Twitter co-founder Biz Stone said the company would conduct an independent security audit of its internal systems and would deploy additional anti-intrusion measures. To date, the company has not provided an update on its security efforts.


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About the Author(s)

Thomas Claburn

Editor at Large, Enterprise Mobility

Thomas Claburn has been writing about business and technology since 1996, for publications such as New Architect, PC Computing, InformationWeek, Salon, Wired, and Ziff Davis Smart Business. Before that, he worked in film and television, having earned a not particularly useful master's degree in film production. He wrote the original treatment for 3DO's Killing Time, a short story that appeared in On Spec, and the screenplay for an independent film called The Hanged Man, which he would later direct. He's the author of a science fiction novel, Reflecting Fires, and a sadly neglected blog, Lot 49. His iPhone game, Blocfall, is available through the iTunes App Store. His wife is a talented jazz singer; he does not sing, which is for the best.

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