17-Year Old Behind Twitter Attack

After a massive Twitter attack sent users to Japanese porn sites and took out Robert Gibbs’ feed Tuesday, a culprit has emerged: a 17-year-old Australian high schooler. Pearce Delphin, who goes by @zzap, first pounced on a security flaw when he tweeted a snippet of “mouseover” code, which opens pop-up windows. "I did it merely to see if it could be done ... that JavaScript really could be executed within a tweet," he said. "At the time of posting the tweet, I had no idea it was going to take off how it did. I just hadn't even considered it." Hackers quickly picked it up and began redirecting millions of users to porn sites, creating havoc for some five hours. "I discovered a vulnerability, I didn't create a self-replicating worm,” he said. “As far as I know, that isn't technically illegal. Hopefully I won't get in trouble!"