TweetDeck was temporarily shut down yesterday (June 11) after a "security issue" caused strange pop-up messages and unintended retweets from users' Twitter accounts.
After first telling users to try logging out and then back on, TweetDeck said it was temporarily disabling the service to assess the issue.
Though it was back up around an hour later, the glitch allowed hackers tweet computer code from other users' accounts.
The hack affected a number of high-profile Twitter accounts including media outlets like The New York Times, BBC News, and CBC News, all of which retweeted a jumble of code from a user named @derGeruhn inadvertently.
The message from@derGeruhn was retweeted over 37,000 times.
The issue was caused by a 19-year-old Austrian programmer, according to USA Today.
Multiple media outlets have reported that the programmer realized that using "&hearts" makes a "♥" symbol in the coding language HTML used on the web.
He told CNN that while experimenting he found that the heart symbol created an opening in the site's software. That made it possible to inject computer program commands through tweets.
He reportedly told Twitter and posted his discovery online. Others then used it to hijack the site before Twitter programmers were able to fix the issue.
The programmer, who goes by the name Firo, was then bombarded by journalists and angry Twitter users.
"I don't want any more publicity," he said in regards to interview requests. "Everyone is hating me, because I reported a major security-bug in TweetDeck. Enough said."
TweetDeck is a free download for desktop computers, iPhones, Google's Android devices and the Google Chrome browser.
Twitter purchased TweetDeck in 2011 for $40 million.
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