Micro-blogging service Twitter was targeted by a wave of attacks by a computer worm over Easter weekend, a co-founder of the Web messaging company said. "On a weekend normally reserved for bunnies, a worm took center stage," Biz Stone said in a post on the official blog of the San Francisco-based start-up.
Stone said the self-replicating computer worm, which resulted in users of the service receiving and sending unwanted messages, had not caused any damage. Stone said Twitter had come under attack on four occasions from the worm, which the online technology news agency CNET said was created by a 17-year-old New York hacker.
He said the worm was similar to the Samy worm which recently attacked social network MySpace. Twitter, which allows users to pepper one another with messages of 140 characters or less, has seen a dizzying surge in popularity since it was launched in August 2006, but has been unable so far to generate revenue.