Earlier on today, when I was viewing my timeline on Twitter, I came across something I had never seen on there before.
A virus (or so it seems).
Sure, there are some people who will use URL-shortening services to try and trick you into viewing sites you may not want to see and some of those may be infected with malware, spyware and other nasties.
This ‘virus’ that I saw today, however, appears to infect people who simply view a Tweeter’s profile page.
It came to my attention when I saw a Tweet from JD Andrews, saying -
Hey everyone, join www.StalkDaily.com. It’s a site like Twitter but with pictures, videos, and so much more!
(In the original Tweet the link to the site in question was fully functional of course.)
The other tweets I’ve seen StalkDaily pump out are -
- Dude, www.StalkDaily.com is awesome. What’s the fuss?
- Join www.StalkDaily.com everyone!
- Woooo, www.StalkDaily.com
- Virus!? What? www.StalkDaily.com is legit!
- Wow…www.StalkDaily.com
- @twitter www.StalkDaily.com
At this point in time I’m not sure anyone knows exactly what is going on but it would appear that either visiting the site or even the related Twitter account is sufficient to cause the infection. (Please let me know if you can clarify that point.)
To find out whether you have been infected visit http://search.twitter.com and enter your username and stalkdaily.com as a search query.
If any results are returned then you have most likely been infected and your account has been used to tweet on their behalf.
SUSPENDED ACCOUNT
At the time of writing the StalkDaily Twitter account has been suspended which should, hopefully, limit future infections.
However, there were many people who were affected who have sent out Tweets, meaning that their followers may yet click on the link to the website.
Therefore, if you see a link to StalkDaily you should not click on it or you too might become infected with this virus.
You shouldn’t, under any circumstances, visit StalkDaily.com, at least until further information is available about who is behind the virus and what their motives are.
If, however, you already have visited the site then you may have been hacked in some way – it seems that some process is causing visitors to automatically tweet a recommendation to visit StalkDaily.com.
In order to achieve this, some code on the website may have cracked your account password.
Therefore, it would be advisable to change yours immediately, just in case.
THE 5 STEP PLAN FOR REMOVING STALKDAILY FROM YOUR PROFILE
If you have been infected with the virus then the following is a simple means of removing it -
- Go into your browser settings and clear the cache and then delete all cookies
- If you are using a 3rd party Twitter client, i.e. TweetDeck, then log out of it
- Visit your account on Twitter.com and change your password
- You should be clear now so log back into Twitter and/or your client
- Review your recent tweets and remove any that promote StalkDaily
(thanks to all on Twitter who have been pumping this information out today)
Incidentally, I have no idea whether StalkDaily is behind this virus, or even if they are aware of what has happened – if it is a competitor trying to undo any goodwill they may have then they’ve certainly succeeded!
Please help to get the word out by Tweeting this post. Thankyou!
UPDATE : Mikeyy worm now being targeted by search engine spammers.
{ 25 comments… read them below or add one }
A quick look around Twitter seems to indicate that the worm is running again but this time it appears to be called Mikeyy.
It looks like a 17 year old kid may have been responsible for the StalkDaily worm : http://www.bnonews.com/news/242.html
http://status.twitter.com/post/95332007/update-on-stalkdaily-com-worm
The ‘virus’ is an xss attack on twitter – http://gist.github.com/93782
You can become infected by visiting ANYONE who has been infected on twitter, whilst logged in but they don’t steal your password.
Assuming all you guys are on Twitter, why don’t you enter your Twitter address to get a link to your profile when you comment?
It seems stalk daily has taken Twitter over. Those they didn’t infect are talking non stop about it.
I think StalkDaily will need to engage in some reputation management after this.
StalkDaily is just about the only conversation on Twitter now.
Is this thing stealing accounts or just hijacking them?
Is this a hoax?
It seemed to die down earlier but now almost every other tweet I see is about it.
@spam on Twitter sat: If you have been locked out of your acct due to the StalkDaily issue, pls do a p/w reset; we may have reset your p/w for safety.
I got hit by it in the last hour. Was rather bizarre as it tweeted 4 tweets from my account directing people to stalkdaily. Luckily I was able to delete the tweets pretty quickly but I still got @replies and unfollows because of the tweet
Ouch, I can see why people would unfollow but its rather harsh when it was far from your fault.
I just saw that tweet, thanks Mike.
I’ve noticed the exact same thing CT.
Nope, it really is going on right now.
As far as I am aware it is ‘borrowing’ accounts in order to send out ‘recommendation’ tweets.
Tell me about it!!!
They certainly will!
BTW, why does your daddy have to shoot Tony Almeida???
They certainly are. I follow a lot of people and its hard to find any conversations that don’t mention StalkDaily right now.
Funnily enough everyone they did infect are talking about it too
Lol, isn’t that the truth!
Nice find Socks, thanks for that.
Thanks for the update.