Tearing Into Twitter

Twitter has been the target of several attacks in recent months:

-- APRIL: The relatively harmless but powerful "StalkDaily" and "Mikeyy" worms hit Twitter, flooding user pages with nuisance messages.

-- MAY: Scam artists blast out "phishing" messages in a bid to trick users into giving away their usernames and passwords at counterfeit Twitter sites.

-- JUNE: Another computer worm spreads on Twitter, downloading a component that tries to frighten and intimidate victims into paying for bogus antivirus software.

-- JULY: Computer security researchers launch the "Month of Twitter Bugs" project, in which they publish for each day of the month a new, previously undocumented security hole in the social network and the services that interact with it.

-- JULY: The "Koobface" worm, a rogue program that previously spread on Facebook, MySpace and other Web 2.0 sites, begins targeting Twitter users.

-- JULY: A hacker breaks into a number of personal accounts of Twitter employees, leaking company proprietary documents to members of the news media.

-- AUGUST: Twitter acknowledges that it is taking steps to block malicious links posted in tweets, using a security service offered by Google.

-- Brian Krebs