When 17-year-old Michael Mooney created a worm that infiltrated Twitter, he thought it might get him a job in the tech industry. He thought correctly.

Mooney says he created the worm because he was bored, though some messages posted by the worm did suggest Twitter should hire him. That’s not come to pass, but Mooney has now been offered jobs by two tech firms, and taken one up with exqSoft Solutions, a Web applications firm.

CEO Travis Rowland says he doesn’t believe Mooney acted maliciously and instead views the worm as providing a service by alerting Twitter to a security issue. “In my opinion, he could have stored the user information on their profiles but he didn’t,” Rowland told ABC. “He didn’t use it to steal personal information.”

Security researcher Dan Kaminsky warns that such tactics were not necessarily a great route to get into the security industry. He notes that high-profile hacking may get attention, but it cuts down the number of firms willing to hire you and thus weakens your bargaining position.

Getting his new job didn’t appear enough for Mooney. After accepting the post, he launched yet another variant of the ‘Mikeyy’ worm. This time it caused compromised accounts to post bogus messages aimed at celebrity users. The worm later began posting messages about the technical details of the security vulnerability and noting that it only affect Internet Explorer users.

According to CNET, Mooney claims he launched the latest worm after attempting to contact Twitter but getting no response. He says this is the only way he can influence Twitter to fix its security problems. Twitter has made no public comment on the issue since a blog post on April 12.

There’s no word yet on any legal action against Mooney for the hacking. However, the Electronic Frontier Foundation says that as he is aged 17, he wouldn’t face federal prosecution.

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Entry was posted on Monday, April 20th, 2009 at 11:22 am under Hacking, Security, Social Media, Web2.0.

Read more entries by John Lister.
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