Since Web Marketing gurus have been able to track the event activity on Twitter.com, no one has disputed the power of instant micro-blogging. Although, popular online marketing tools never seem to last long without becoming an equally popular target for hackers.
It seems Australia can now boast another Web Star besides WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. 17 year old Pearce Delphin has been named as the starting point of this week’s international Twitter incident. Pearce has gained his 15 minutes of global E-Fame by tweeting a fairly common Javascript Code called an “onMouseover“. The “onMouseover” Javascript command causes a link to trigger an event when the pointer moves over it. Pearce Delphin claims he created the tweet only to see if it was possible, but other hackers took advantage of his curious ingenuity. Web tyrants used the “onMouseover” to cause Japanese porn site pop ups and to launch worm viruses, which automatically replicate the tweet. This ball of reprehensible web crap found it’s way to the accounts of such high-profile figures as White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs and Sarah Brown, wife of former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown.
“The vast majority of exploits related to this incident fell under the prank or promotional categories. Users may still see strange retweets in their timelines caused by the exploit. However, we are not aware of any issues related to it that would cause harm to computers or their accounts. And, there is no need to change passwords because user account information was not compromised through this exploit.” – Twitter.com
Twitter has decided not to press charges against Pearce Delphin for his simple curiosities and understanding of Web Code. The 17 year old from Melbourne is enjoying every millisecond of his media coverage. His Twitter profile reads, “An almost legal teen (XVII), social media whore & politics lover. Good at being angry on Twitter. Also good at drinking vodka. & looking hot.” Oh to be seventeen and baptized by electronics.
