Friday, September 24, 2010

Last Week's Twitter Attack Unintentionally Originated from Japan!?

I have written extensively before on how I question Twitter's long-term viability as a solid business in the west before. See here and here and here. But I have always thought Twitter would do well in Japan because Twitter allows 140 characters - I think it is often too short for English, but, in Japanese using Chinese kanji, one can write a mini novel on Twitter since kanji often represent entire ideas.

But now here comes some news that claims last weeks terrible Twitter hack problems originated from Japan!


This week's Twitter attack that caused a widespread headache for the micro-blogging service appears to have been triggered by a Japanese computer hacker who says he was only trying to help. The attack, which emerged and was shut down within hours Tuesday morning, involved a "cross-site scripting" flaw that allowed users to run JavaScript programs on other computers. The originator is believed to be someone who uses the name "Masato Kinugawa" in cyberspace and acknowledges creating the Twitter account "RainbowTwtr" that demonstrated the vulnerability. Through his Twitter account and personal blog, Kinugawa regularly tracks down possible computer security loopholes and notifies companies of their existence.

There are "Twitter-like" competitors in Asia. The best is Pick. Pick allows you to place a photo right on your tweet (or I guess I should say, Pick") so you don't have to click-through to a different page like "Twit-pick" and, with how conscious of their privacy Asians are, these kinds of trouble for Twitter spell big opportunity for the Asian companies.

We'll see how this all plays out.... Either way, more bad publicity for Twitter.    

See original article.
 

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