This has not been a good weekend at Twitter, where a series of worms has been annoying the heck out of people by infecting their accounts and sending out fake tweets under their name. The first one promoted a Twitter-like site called StalkDaily; others make reference to Mikeyy, who’s supposedly StalkDaily’s 17-year-old proprietor and the perpetrator of at least some of the worms. Twitter says they’re on the case, but as I write this, the fraudulent Mikeyy-related Tweets are still coming fast and furious, including ones with links which, if clicked, infect the viewer:

The attacks leverage a JavaScript cross-site scripting vulnerability, so you’re probably at risk no matter what browser and OS you use. Here’s some advice on avoiding the worm(s) and getting rid of them if you’ve been infected. (Sounds like the single most important piece of advice is to use Twitter via a third-party client like TweetDeck or Tweetie rather than at Twitter.com itself.)

If Mikeyy is real, is seventeen, and is behind these attacks, he’s like a lot of seventeen-year-olds I’ve known–really smart and really dumb at the same time. Here’s hoping he doesn’t get away with it. I’m not sure what the proper punishment is, but more and more, I think that the Internet needs some sort of virtual stockade to enable the painful public humiliation of those who screw it up for the rest of us:

 
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