That is the very question I asked myself when I read that the New York Post’s Twitter account had been hacked circa 16 January 2015. With the shenanigans currently underway at Sony Pictures, you’d think that all media types will have resurrected the proverbial fence around their digital entities.
There were falsified posts regarding the Federal Reserves and US Military. Imagine for a second, that World War 3 was started by a social network, which will be cynically hilarious. How does this hacking occur? It can be as simple as gaining the account details (maybe from a disgruntled employee) or as intense as pairing a database of usernames and passwords. Username is easy as it is the Twitter handle, and because humans are lazy to remember complex passwords, the Twitter handle can be matched to database containing millions of password options.
You have got to wonder, with the reach and potential influence Twitter has, they seem to be a glass volt among the social media market. It is especially worrying that the unlawful entry to a Twitter account can be done by a radical group living “off the grid” situated in a third world desert country. Below are some of the major accounts that have been hacked since Twitter’s inception
Fox News, Burger King, U.S. Central Command Hacked
• July 2011 – Fox News
• February 2013 – Burger King
• February 2013 – Jeep
• April 2013 – Associated Press
• October 2013 – A link in a tweet posted by President Obama, was re-directed to a video about terror attacks
• January 2015 – U.S. Central Command which oversees ops in the Middle East
• January 2015 – United Press International in parallel with the New York Post hacking
With each new attack, we get the same old, “it is under investigation” or “So and So have claimed responsibility”, we don’t get to see someone go down for this, legally. Perhaps Twitter’s security perforations is what has seen their user number dwindle in recent times, maybe the risk far outweighs the reward.