Twitter hack fended off

Upon further review, I may ask Twitter to never update me to the "new" interface.

News this morning that hackers got into the Twitter microblogging service and left behind nasties that had the potential to send people to virus-infected websites leads me to believe the technical folks in tweetland have bigger things on their minds than rolling out a new look to a half-billion users. I didn't see any evidence of the mischief, as it happened in the wee hours of the morning, but reports say that some Twitter accounts, including the White House's, were affected.

It seems that flocks of mystery tweets that included blocked-out text spread automatically and caused pop-up windows to open, according to an Associated Press story. The bug was activated simply by "mousing" the cursor over the text. No clicks were required to set the retweeting in motion. The technical term is "cross-site scripting."

Read the full story here:
Twitter hack opens pop-ups, causes havoc
http://yhoo.it/hackedtwit

That explains some of the tweets from folks on the East Coast I saw early today. They were either wondering what was going on or taking the blame for hitting the wrong key and triggering the troubles.

The twitterverse should be back to normal, according to @Twitter. Here's a tweet from their people about the issue:
@Twitter
Hear about a Twitter.com security issue involving "moused over links"? We have too. And, we fixed it. For now, check out @safety for more.

Now, back to the rollout of the "new" site. I'm happy with things just the way they are. Y'all go and get things working just right, then give me a choice to flip the switch to the updated features.

If it ain't broke ...