Tumblr Falls To The Hands Of Trolls

You might think that the Internet is a very safe place, but rest assured, you would be mistaken for thinking that way. After all, the latest incident that involves Tumblr has proved otherwise, after being a victim of a security exploit earlier on Monday morning. This particular attack actually managed to suck in thousands of users, where among them include tech news sites such as Cnet, the Daily Dot and The Verge. Known as GNAA collectively, these culprits managed to figure out an exploit in the Javascript code which enables Tumblr’s users to reblog other users’ posts. This exploit was then made use of to the fullest, forcing its own tirade which will automatically repost on the Tumblr blog of anyone who clicked it.

In hindsight, when the exploit was at its theoretical “peak,” GNAA claimed that it managed to rack up thousands of victims. In fact, its last public proclamation was a tweet (which needless to say, has been deleted), sporting a victim count 8,600. The real world effects were actually rather minimal, and you can remove the offending posts by dropping by Tumblr’s mass post editor, followed by deleting the slew of posts which are part of your queue.

Edwin Kee
Categories: Computers
Tags: tumblr