It was confirmed by Twitter’s Vice President of Global Communications, Brandon Borrman, that Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey’s Twitter account had been hacked on August 20th, 2019.
What We Know:
- It was found that there was “no indication that Twitter’s systems had been compromised,” but further investigation needs to occur before conclusions can be made.
- All that could be confirmed was that Dorsey’s account had in fact been hacked. Borman advised that “Yes, Jack’s account was compromised. We’re working on it and investigating what happened.”
- The tweets on Friday consisted of a rush of more than 15 offensive tweets. Profanity and racist comments were posted. After 20 minutes of the tweets being posted, Twitter started deleting them, although not soon enough to prevent them from going viral.
- “Some of the tweets used anti-black slurs, praised Hitler and talked about a bomb at Twitter’s headquarters. Many of them referenced the Chuckling Squad, a group that took credit for the hack of several YouTube and Instagram stars earlier this month, including James Charles, Shane Dawson, King Bach and Amanda Cerny.”
- Dorsey’s 4.2 million followers and others brought up some interesting concerns about the security of Twitter. Many were concerned that President Donald Trump could be hacked as well, possibly affecting global political relations. With his primary use on Twitter being to announce policy decisions, Trump could be a prime target.
- Trump didn’t seem to take the concern too seriously, though. “Well, I hope they’re not hacking my account, but actually if they do, they’re not going to learn too much more than what I put out, right? Shouldn’t be too bad.”
- Although it is concerning to hear that the company’s own CEO got hacked, it can’t be confirmed what kind of security measures Dorsey uses. This isn’t the first time he’s gotten hacked. In 2016, a connection from his Twitter to his Vine could have been caused by the complex hacking of the use of a SIM-card swap (a swap that was encouraged by his wireless carrier). This can be dangerous and compromise personal information as it can be used to validate accounts.
- As explained by Lawrence Pingree, a Research Vice President at Gartner Inc., getting a new SIM card is fairly easy. “You can call in and say, I bought a new phone and I need a new SIM card assigned to this number,” he said. “If the caller provides the correct information, they might succeed, and the problem is made worse because call centers handle so many calls,” Pingree added.
It was later found that they believe Dorsey’s phone number was compromised and that is what may have caused the most recent hack. It’s frightening to think about hacking and how often it occurs. Maybe in the future, we will take online security as seriously as we do with our physical world.
