There was a report yesterday where a certain hacker claimed to be selling almost 33 million passwords from Twitter accounts on the dark web. Such news is usually the stuff of nightmares for companies that are directly affected and this actually prompted Twitter to give more information about the issue.
In a blogpost, Twitter decided to set the record straight about the purported case about the “hacked accounts.” They apparently investigated those claims made by the hacker and they found that they were not obtained from Twitter’s servers. “In each of the recent password disclosures, we cross checked the data with our records,” Twitter’s Trust & Information Security Officer, Michael Coates, explains in the blog post. “As a result, a number of Twitter accounts were identified for extra protection. Accounts with direct password exposure were locked and require a password reset by the account owner.”
Twitter also took the chance to advice people on how to keep their accounts safe. This includes the classic “use a strong password” to secure your account which is not used by other websites, use of password managers like LastPass and enabling two factor authentication (my favourite.)
We have seen a lot of reports of hacks this week which includes the popular one against Mark Zuckerberg’s other social media accounts. One of the biggest ways these hackers are able to take control of your account is through the numerous dumb passwords so many people use and are not surprisingly are among the top passwords used globally. You may have to change your password right now to prevent your data in your various social networks being sold on the dark web.
