Twitter have explained the circumstances surrounding the bug that caused problems for people using the social networking site on Tuesday.
Twitter say that the problem was reported to them at around 3am PDT and the issue resolved around 4 hours later.
Bug cause
The bug, say Twitter, was caused by cross-site scripting which is where code from an untrusted website is placed into another one. In this particular instance, a tweet containing javascript was able to be run in the browsers of other users.
Twitter state that in fact this bug was identified and patched last month but owing to a recent Twitter update, the problem came back.
onMouseOver flaw
The bug enabled a specific user of Twitter to create a new account and to turn tweets different colors and present a pop-up box when the cursor was hovered over the tweet - the "onMouseOver" flaw as it is now known.
Twitter say some users may still see some odd tweets in their timeline but that there is no need to change account passwords as this information was not violated.
Twitter say they apologise to those that were affected and assure users of their commitment to identifying future potential problems before they happen.
