Twitter Worm Takes Social Network by Storm

The aggressive worm now affecting Twitter over the past several days continues it's invasion of the popular social networking Website. While Twitter has stated that they are currently taking steps to solve the problem, some analysts believe that mutations of the worm may continue to disrupt the network over the coming weeks.

The creator of the worm was tracked to a young man named Mike Mooney, who stated that he created the worm because he was bored. The worm itself infects new accounts and then sends unauthorized messages to every person on the users list, opening the receiver up to infection as well. Thus far there have been four such waves of attacks, with more expected in the coming weeks.

So how can you prevent this from happening to you?

The first step is to disable JavaScript in your Internet web browser. Doing so will prevent the worm from spreading into your account when you view it by stopping the script from running. It's also advised that you don't click links from tweets that include links with the words Stalk Daily or Mikey in them. You can also try using twitter software such as Twhirl or TweetDeck which are available for both the PC and Macintosh.

Remove the Twitter Worm

So you've seen some suspicious tweets coming from your profile mentioning Stalk Daily, Mikey or other strange phrases. Odds are you've been infected by the Stalk Daily worm. The following steps will allow you to remove the nasty little guy from your account and computer.

The first step is to turn your JavaScrpit off as mentioned above. Next you'll want to go to your Internet options, and clear your web browsers Internet cache and temporary files. Login to your twitter account, and search for any messages that you did not send and delete them. You may notice that your profile has been edited, at this point it's safe to go in and change your profile back to the way you want it.

From here you can turn javascript back on, but consider using one of the desktop clients such as Twhirl or TweetDeck above to avoid any future re-infections.

Additional Resources:

Twitter

Twhirl

Tweet Deck