Tweetdeck shuts down after hacking attack

MANILA, Philippines (UPDATED) – Twitter’s ‘tool for real-time tracking, organizing, and engagement’ Tweetdeck was hacked Thursday, July 12, and the social network has taken down the service until the issue is fixed.

We’ve temporarily taken TweetDeck services down to assess today’s earlier security issue. We’ll update when services are back up.

— TweetDeck (@TweetDeck) June 11, 2014

A “cross-site scripting” (XSS) vulnerability leaves users’ accounts open to hijacking.

According to The Guardian, most versions of the hacking do nothing more but irritate users by opening dialogue boxes, while another version forced retweets that quickly spread. Another version changed Tweetdeck’s font to Comic Sans.

Tweetdeck announced on Twitter that it was able to fix the problem approximately an hour after shutting the services down. 

We’ve verified our security fix and have turned TweetDeck services back on for all users. Sorry for any inconvenience.

— TweetDeck (@TweetDeck) June 11, 2014

TweetDeck is an app that lets Twitter users monitor multiple Twitter timelines at one time. It’s perfect for monitoring and managing multiple accounts. The app also has a schedule tweet feature that lets users send tweets on a later date and time. – Rappler.com