Twitter has now become the undeniable darling of marketing enthusiasts, as this medium of communication has augured millions of dedicated users. This has also led to a lot of the bad guys looking at this medium to spread bile.

I am going to provide some links based on which some “twitspam” tool-kits are developed. I am not going to discuss how XSS/malware injection is used to spam users, but will look into developing a twitter bot.

The basic concepts are pretty well established: bots. Used on nearly every software communication channel known, from IRC to what not. A whole list of bots for twitter is available at twitter.pbworks.com. In fact you can even create you own bot at www.botomatic.com.

If you are a pythonista, this might be of interest to you. It logs into your email server to retrieve and analyze tweets and take appropriate action.

• flowingdata.com

from imaplib import *
from email.Parser import Parser
import datetime, time, email, email.Utils
import re

# Connect to email server
server = IMAP4("__EMAIL_SERVER.COM__")
server.login("__EMAIL_ACCOUNT_NAME__", "__EMAIL_PASSWORD__")
r = server.select("INBOX")

# Find only new mail (i.e. new direct messages)
r, data = server.search(None, "(NEW)")

# If there are new direct messages:
if len(data[0]) > 0:

	p = Parser()

	# Loop through new emails
	for num in data[0].split():

		# Who email is from (Should be one line, broken for display only)
		r, data = server.fetch(num, '(BODY[HEADER.FIELDS
			(DATE SUBJECT FROM X-TwitterEmailType X-TwitterSenderScreenName
			X-TwitterCreatedAt X-TwitterRecipientScreenName)])')
		msg = p.parsestr(data[0][1])
		who = msg.__getitem__('From')
		matchemail = re.compile(r'[\w\-][\w\-\.]+@[\w\-][\w\-\.]+[a-zA-Z]{1,4}')
		email_addy = matchemail.findall(who)[0]

		# Twitter username
		twitter_un = msg.__getitem__('X-TwitterSenderScreenName')

		# If the email is a direct message sent from Twitter
		if msg.__getitem__('X-TwitterEmailType') == 'direct_message':

		# When direct message sent, convert to epoch seconds
			twitter_time = msg.__getitem__('X-TwitterCreatedAt').strip()
			time_tuple = email.Utils.parsedate(twitter_time)
			epoch_seconds = time.mktime(time_tuple)

			# Get body of email sent by Twitter
			r, data = server.fetch(num, '(RFC822.TEXT)')
			body = data[0][1]
			twitter_dm = body.split("\r\n\r\n")[0].strip()

			# Do something with the twitter direct message...
			# Parse it...
			# Store it in a database?...

# Logout of email server
server.logout()

There’s a five minute version in PHP too!

• www.smmguru.com

<?php
    mysql_connect("localhost", "USERNAME", "PASSWORD") or die('Could not connect to database');
    mysql_select_db("DATABASE") or die('Could not select database');

    $result = mysql_query ("SELECT * FROM tweets ORDER BY RAND() LIMIT 1");

    while($row = mysql_fetch_array($result)){
        $tweet = "$row[tweet]";
        sendTweet($tweet);
    }

    function sendTweet($msg){
        $username = 'TWITTER-USER-NAME';
        $password = 'TWITTER-PASS';

        $url = 'http://twitter.com/statuses/update.xml';

        $curl_handle = curl_init();

        curl_setopt($curl_handle, CURLOPT_URL, "$url");
        curl_setopt($curl_handle, CURLOPT_CONNECTTIMEOUT, 2);
        curl_setopt($curl_handle, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1);
        curl_setopt($curl_handle, CURLOPT_POST, 1);
        curl_setopt($curl_handle, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, "status=$msg");
        curl_setopt($curl_handle, CURLOPT_USERPWD, "$username:$password");

        $buffer = curl_exec($curl_handle);

        curl_close($curl_handle);

        if (empty($buffer)) {
            echo 'fail';
        } else {
            echo 'success';
        }
    }
?>

• 

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