14 DAY TRIAL // Over the past few hours, a large number of Tumblr users have been complaining that arbitrary posts have been published on their blogs.
The posts in question are comprised of adult content, simple text posts, and even “how to pet a cat” advisories. However, the most interesting thing is that, in many cases, they can’t be removed because victims are no longer able to access their dashboard.
According to Chris Boyd of ThreatTrack Security, this could be caused by several things.
“It could be a worm or a hack, but it could also be some sort of bizarre glitch. It’s interesting that a lot of the unauthorised posting revolves around [adult content] – it isn’t so long ago that the Yahoo acquired site attempted to crackdown on [adult content], with somewhat mixed results,” Boyd noted in a blog post.
“Is this a belated form of protest, or did someone just accidentally trip over the wrong wire at Tumblr HQ?”
The expert has contacted Tumblr in hopes that he can get some answers, but the company refuses to provide any details. On the other hand, the blogging platform’s representatives say they’re working on fixing the problem.
“Our engineers are aware of this issue and are currently working on a fix. We hope to have the problem resolved shortly. Thanks for your patience,” reads the response Tumblr gave to Boyd.
Until this is sorted, users are recommended to check the apps they’ve authorized on Tumblr. The applications that are not recognized should be removed.
Changing the Tumblr account password is also recommended.
Judging by the large number of messages sent out by Tumblr users on Twitter, the issue hasn’t been sorted yet.
“There's a lot of unknown people in my dashboard that I don't even follow,” one user writes.
Update. Tumblr confirmed that this was the result of infrastructure failure, not a hack.