Twitter gets the 'all-clear' after a weekend of virus antics

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In a metaphorical ‘get your own back’ situation, everyone’s favourite bird-themed microblogging website, Twitter, was assaulted by worms over Easter weekend. Four waves of assaults hit the site, with those infected spamming out a link to a Twitter clone called StalkDaily.

The creator of StalkDaily, 17-year-old American student Michael Mooney, has admitted he was responsible, saying:

“I really didn’t think it was going to get that much attention, but then I started to see all these stories about it and thought, ‘Oh, my God’.”

While the attack could have been considerably worse if it had been more malicious in intent, security experts said they were surprised it had even been possible on the site, as Facebook and MySpace saw similar assaults quite some time ago. Twitter has promised to conduct a ‘full review’ of what happened.

Twitter (via BBC)

eBay Nutcase of the Week: Woman auctions virginity

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A 22-yr old Californian student has attempted to auction her virginity on popular online auction site eBay. She claims she’s doing it to pay for her college education, but a huge online debate about sexuality and morality has surfaced. The student, who isn’t using her real name, attempted to place an auction on eBay, but the site turned her down. She’s instead going to be auctioning it at a public event in a brothel in Nevada – the “Moonlite Bunny Ranch”. She’s hoping the bidding will reach US$1 million…

YouTube Video of the Day – John Kerry questioner gets tasered by US police

It happened a couple of days ago, but this video is already causing a big stir on YouTube. A student at a John Kerry forum asks a few testy questions and as a result, is arrested by US police and tasered. Remember when US colleges were the hotbed of political debate? Not anymore. For a news report on the incident click here and for another angle from someone in the attendance, click here.

September storm of spam coming, targeting students

junk_email.gifThere’ll be a 40 per cent increase in email spam in September, thanks to spammers perfecting their new techniques, and things are only going to get worse according to the email security firm SoftScan.

They believe that many spammers will target students returning to colleges and universities, because they have the potential to connect unprotected laptops to large, fast, educational networks which may themselves be poorly secured.

SoftScan say that a typical student’s surfing habits — careless use of the Net, including spending a long time in chat rooms and playing online games — makes them the perfect target. Their shiny new laptop may already be part of a “botnet” before being connected to a college’s network.