Bug That Caused Pop-ups & Re-directs Resulted In Twitter Troubles

Twitter says it has managed to stop a bug that caused problems for some users of the micro-blogging site Tuesday.

Tweets containing blocked text turned up, causing pop-up windows to open on a user’s computer and reportedly redirecting some users to pornography websites. This problem was particularly troubling because a person didn’t have to click on the message – simply rolling a cursor over the tweet caused trouble.

It’s not known yet if the bug can caused problems on individual computers. Twitter said it doesn’t believe any of its users computers were compromised.

According to software developer F-Secure Corp., this bug may have been the shortest on record – fitting for Twitter – at just 22 characters in length.

Sarah Brown, the wife of former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, was hit by the hack Tuesday, according to a report on the BBC’s website. The official Twitter feed of the White House was also affected, but the tweet was promptly removed.

The bug only affected visitors to twitter.com. Third-party tweet management programs, such as HootSuite, TweetDeck and Echofon, to name a few, appeared unaffected.

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