July 31st, 2008
CSRF vulnerability allows Twitter 'follow' abuse
Last week, TechCrunch’s Jason Kincaid wrote about an obvious Twitter vulnerability that allowed a user called “johng77536″ to game the popular micro-blogging service to add thousands of followers (subscribers) in a short period of time.
The “johng77536″ account has since been disabled but a security researcher tracking Twitter security flaws and weaknesses has discovered a new vulnerability that lets users easily game the “follow” system.
Aviv Raff has launched a new Web site called TwitPwn.com with basic details of his discovery:
Twitter suffers from a vulnerability which allows an attacker to force his victim to follow him automatically.
Twitter security team was notified on 31-July-2008.
Technical details will be added as soon as this vulnerability [is] fixed.
Raff showed me a proof-of-concept exploit that took advantage of a CSRF (cross site request forgery) bug to trick me into following his Twitter account by simply clicking on a rigged Web site. A spammer or phisher could abuse this vulnerability to gain thousands of “followers” and attempt social engineering attacks.
Twitter’s security team has promised a fix within 24 hours.
Raff’s discovery isn’t the first. He has assisted Twitter with fixing another bug that could be abused to send spam mails with malicious links. Several Twitter cross-site scripting bugs have also been found and fixed.
Ryan Naraine is a journalist and security evangelist at Kaspersky Lab. He manages Threatpost.com, a security news portal. Here is Ryan's full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
For daily updates on Ryan's activities, follow him on Twitter.
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