Twitter hacked (again): only CHUCK NORRIS can save us now

Twitter’s meltdown today saw every user lose all their followers – at least on paper – as the company’s emergency solution for closing the newly discovered loophole (which allowed any user to force any other user to automatically follow back) has involved temporarily shutting down everyone’s ability to follow or unfollow, with the result being that every Twitter user is now listed as having zero followers and following zero people themselves. While Twitter is still otherwise working in that users can still tweet and view their timelines, those celebrities with the largest disparity in their follower-to-following ratio are seeing the biggest impact from the glitch. Here’s what a few of them have had to say on the matter:

Ashton Kutcher, Twitter’s most-followed user: “twitter is being hacked by some turkish hacker. haha I have 0 followers.”
Perez Hilton, whom some are crediting for having primarily helped spread the hacking method: “To force someone to follow you on Twitter, type “accept [username without the @ symbol]“, e.g. accept [AplusK]” [editor’s note: this no longer works]

and from Twitter itself: “Follow count display is set to 0 and follow/unfollow is temporarily offline while we fix a bug.”
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Filed under: Security - @ May 11, 2010 1:53 am

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