Beijing police detain man suspected of hacking Weibo
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Xinhua, July 7, 2011
?Police in Beijing said Thursday they had detained a man who allegedly "maliciously" spread posts with their web addresses to a large number of users of China's popular microblogging service Sina Weibo, a Chinese-language Twitter clone.
The 26-year-old man, surnamed Luo, took advantage of the service's security loopholes and sent private posts, with their web addresses, to more than 69,000 Weibo users on June 29, said a spokesman with the Beijing Municipal Public Security Bureau.
After the users clicked on the posts, they automatically became followers of Luo's Weibo account and forwarded on the posts, said the spokesman.
The affected accounts involved those of Chinese celebrities who had thousands of followers on the Sina Weibo.
Luo confessed that his act was aimed at attracting attention to his own Weibo account, said the spokesman.
The Sina Weibo, launched in August 2009, had more than 140 million registered accounts by April, and the number is expected to exceed 200 million by the end of this year.
