Earlier this morning several Twitter users and bloggers notice that there was a problem within the Twitter interface. Apparently, a hacker took advantage of a loophole in the new Twitter interface recently introduced. The Twitter virus used a known Javascript function called onMouseOver to allow third party sites to pop up from the twitter homepage whenever a users mouse passed over a certain part of text. Because of the ease that this virus was able to spread, both from the mouseover Javascript, as well as the fact that the virus made users retweet malicious links to their followers, thousands of Twitter users were likely infected. One notable infection occurred on the Twitter account of the White House Press Secretary, Robert Gibbs.

The Virus has not affected third party Twitter apps such as Tweetdeck, and others.

Word from Twitter representatives however indicate that the security hole was patched, and the virus is no longer able to gain traction to spread. The following blog post was made at the Twitter status blog:

We’ve identified and are patching a XSS attack; as always, please message @safety if you have info regarding such an exploit.
We expect the patch to be fully rolled out shortly and will update again when it is.
Update (6:50 PDT, 13:50 UTC): The exploit is fully patched.