A teenager from Brooklyn launched two Twitter “worms” this past weekend, to expose both a flaw in the microblogging site and his own existential “boredom.”
The worms—which create spam Twitter posts containing the words “Mikeyy” or “StalkDaily”—were apparently created to expose a hole left by Twitter security analysts: one that allows spam messages to be transmitted unknowingly from one worm-infected Twitter account to another.
Michael “Mikeyy” Mooney, 17, confessed to “planting” the worm out of boredom: “I thought about it later and basically did it because I was bored,” he confessed to CNET. “And I didn’t think Twitter would fix [the flaw] very soon. But I didn’t think it would spread as far or as fast as it did.”
In an ironic twist, Mooney admits to CNET that he one day hopes to become…a security analyst. In the meantime, though, he thinks he’s too cool for Twitter:
Mooney, a high school senior who said one day he hopes to get a job as a security analyst, said he has been creating worms for about three years. He added that the worms he creates aren’t designed to do much damage but that this will likely be his last worm.
“I’m done with Twitter,” he said, adding that he was feeling a bit overwhelmed. “I’ve been getting too much attention lately.”
Hey Mikeyy, what happens on the Internet, stays on the Internet. (Too bad everyone else in the world can see it…)
