The death of the Month of Bugs phenomenon was apparently greatly exaggerated.

This week, security researcher Aviv Raff kicked off his own Month of Twitter Bugs, highlighting security flaws in add-ons for the popular social-networking application. the researcher decided to kick off the initiative to highlight the potential for the Twitter application program interface (API) to be used for unintended and malicious purposes.

"Three years after the Month of Browser Bugs, I’ve decided to declare July 2009 as Month of Twitter Bugs (MoTB)," Raff wrote last month. "I hope that Twitter and other Web 2.0 API providers will work closely with their API consumers to develop more secure products."

The Month of Bugs phenomenon started in July 2006, when well-known security researcher H.D. Moore kicked off a Month of Browser Bugs, highlighting significant issues in Web browser software. In the following year, at least six other collections of vulnerability research were announced, including the Month of Kernel Bugs in November, the Month of Apple Bugs in January, the Month of PHP Bugs in March, and the Month of MySpace Bugs in April &mdash although that project only released 19 issues. A week dedicated to Oracle bugs was scuttled.

Raff kicked off the month by releaseing two vulnerabilities this week: Multiple issues in the bit.ly service that can be used to send tweets, and issue in HootSuite that can be used to modify Twitter accounts and send Tweets. Both sets of issues have been fixed by the developers.

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