In what is certain weigh heavy on the irony scales, the CEO of arguably the most popular microblogging platform, Twitter, had his Twitter account hacked and compromised by a hacking collective known as OurMine.
OurMine, a hacker group that has notably compromised several social media accounts belonging to tech industry executives such as Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Google CEO Sundar Pichai, Yahoo CEO Melissa Mayer, among others, has struck again. This time, it was the CEO of Twitter who saw his Twitter account taken over briefly.
Jack Dorsey, co-founder and recently reinstated CEO of Twitter also had his Vine account – linked with his Twitter account – hacked by the hacking group.
After compromising the account, the group posted a now-deleted tweet that read:
Hey, its OurMine,we are testing your security.
The tweets came through the interlinked Vine account, which could mean that Dorsey had a shared password used on both his Vine and Twitter accounts. Still, it proves to be an embarrassing gaffe when the co-founder and chief executive of a social media platform sees his own account on the very same platform, compromised.
Also read: NFL’s Twitter Account Hacked
Twitter owns Vine, which allows users to log in to Vine via their Twitter account, using the app’s two-factor (2FA) authentication system. However, older Vine users can also use a separate username and password, which could be the reason behind the compromise of Dorsey’s account, if he were sharing the password.
Altogether, the spate of social media account hacks underlines the ease of which accounts can be compromised in a vastly-connected technological ecosystem. An easily forgettable facet of a program could turn into simply being the weakest link – not only to the platform but other interconnected websites, as evident with the Vine-Twitter link.
LIFARS recommends that users of social media platforms enable two-factor authentication for a better security standard that goes a step beyond good, secure passwords.
Image credit: Pixabay.
