Twitter shut down its TweetDeck app Friday afternoon in response to a security bug, after an Australian user logged in to find that he was able to access hundreds of accounts that were not his own, reports TechCrunch.
The Tweetdeck user, Geoff Evason of Sydney, Australia, described his issue to TechCrunch in a series of emails.
"I’m a tweetdeck user. A bug has given me access to hundreds of twitter and facebooks account through tweetdeck. I didn’t do anything special to make this happen. I just logged in one day, the account was was slower than normal, and I could post from many more accounts.
"I normally use the tweetdeck web client. A few days ago it started freezing when I logged in. Today I downloaded the native mac client, and it crashes too, but not before it shows me some streams and lets me post."
Evason tweeted his concern to @TweetDeck and @Twitter, and included a screenshot of the bug with his tweet. Another tweet from an account that Evason does not own is apparently proof of the bug in action.
It is not known whether or not other accounts are affected by this bug, but Twitter, which acquired TweetDeck in May 2011 for around $40 million, responded quickly by taking down the application. The only official response aside from the takedown is this sole message from the @TweetDeck account. Access to TweetDeck is currently still unavailable.