A Weird Twitter Bug Is Screwing Up The Internet

There's a weird bug making its away around the Internet that automatically downloads a torrent file of Twitter's "Tweet" button when visiting certain websites. You may have seen it on sites like TechCrunch and Business Insider.

$4, a lot of users complained that websites with the "Tweet" button installed were asking them to download a torrent file, $4. BitTorrent seems to be associated with the bug.

"Instead of loading the iframed HTML for the familiar blue 'Tweet' button, website visitors were offered a .torrent file, variously titled 'widgets_tweet_button.html.torrent' or 'widgets-tweet_button.html.torrent'," $4, concluding it was likely Twitter's error. "So what was the payload inside the mysterious torrent file? The HTML for Twitter's button distributed using BitTorrent trackers hosted by Amazon, no less."

A temporary workaround for publishers seems to be removing all the Twitter share buttons from your site.

We've reached out to Twitter for comment.

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