Phishing and Hacking Problems on Twitter

The last couple days there has been a lot of buzz on Twitter caused by a phishing scam that many fell for, compromising their accounts and allowing the scammers to post bogus DMs using those accounts. However, yesterday something happened that I find much more disturbing.

Over the weekend 33 Twitter accounts were hacked including those of Britney Spears, Barack Obama, actor Stephen Fry, and CNN anchor Rick Sanchez, and fake tweets were posted on their profile pages.

This tweet was posted on Rick Sanchez’s page; “I am high on crack right now; might not be coming into work today.” Barack Obama was credited with posting; “What is your opinion on Barack Obama? Take the survey and possibly win $500 in free gas.” Jokes about Britney Spear’s measurements and the size of her vagina were posted on her page and an iPhone giveaway was posted on Fry’s.

The Phishing scam required users to login from a bogus Twitter page which allowed the scammers to harvest their passwords but in the case of Spears, Obama, Fry and Sanchez it appears that their accounts were actually hacked directly which causes me to seriously question the security of our Twitter accounts. The idea that my account could be so easily hacked and fake tweets posted which could be seriously damaging to my credibility concerns me greatly.

Twitter’s explanation for the hacked accounts is as follows, “The issue with these 33 accounts is different from the Phishing scam aimed at Twitter users this weekend. These accounts were compromised by an individual who hacked into some of the tools our support team uses to help people do things like edit the email address associated with their Twitter account when they can’t remember or get stuck. We considered this a very serious breach of security and immediately took the support tools offline. We’ll put them back only when they’re safe and secure.” You can read the entire post here.