OPINION: It's a sign of how vulnerable some of our systems are and how weak rule enforcement is that Mikeyy is still abusing Twitter users today. And other malefactors are getting in on his act.
Mikey Mooney, author of the Twitter worm, released another one Saturday
night,
according
to security software firm F-Secure.
After
the
first round of Twitter worms he created a week ago Mikeyy, as he was known
on Twitter, said he did it out of boredom, but that he wouldn't be upset to get
a job out of the whole episode. Before very long
he actually
did get hired by exqSoft Solutions, a custom Web applications development
company.
He
also got hacked, revealing many of his usernames and passwords among other
details.
Was that enough for Mikeyy? It would seem not, according to F-Secure. I'm
not sure how they know he's actually doing it and not someone using his name,
but it looks like a new variant of the Mikeyy worm is out. The name of the
user's bio is changed to "Mikeyy" and the title of the profile to
"Mikey and the Mysterious Treqz." The variant also runs some hostile
scripts that appear still to be up as of Monday morning.
It then sends out these, and more messages:
- Be nice to your kids. They'll
choose your nursing home. Womp. mikeyy.
- If you are born ugly blame
your parents, if you died ugly blame your doctor. Womp. mikeyy.
- Every man should marry. After
all, happiness is not the only thing in life. Womp. mikeyy.
At the same time Trend Micro is reporting that
other
malicious actors are taking advantage of public interest in Twitter worms to
spread malicious links.
Google searches for "Twitter worm" and "Mikeyy" are
being poisoned with links to malicious software. Their analysis indicates that
the malware causes a series of downloader programs to execute, which then
download and install further malware.
Other reports, such as
this one on Mashable,
indicate that Mikeyy, or a Mikeyy-like worm, is sending messages to
celebrities. This shows one way that the phenomenon could get much worse: by
getting a very popular user like Oprah or Lance Armstrong infected. Some
popular users have hundreds of thousands of followers, and such an infection
would be a serious crisis for Twitter.
Once again, if you see one of these messages, don't click on the profile or
any links in the message. It's also probably a good idea to use a third-party
Twitter app than the Website now, although that's no guarantee of safety.
Security Center
Editor Larry Seltzer
has worked in and written about the computer industry since 1983.
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