Mark Zuckerberg may tape over his webcam to keep himself safe, but there didn’t seem to be much Jack Dorsey could do to keep his own Twitter account secure. That’s right — not even the CEO of Twitter is immune to Twitter hacks, as hackers associated with OurMine took over the executive’s account early Saturday morning. At 2:50 a.m. ET, a tweet reading, “Hey, its OurMine, we are testing your security” and linking to the group’s website was briefly posted. While it was eventually deleted, identical tweets continued to appear.
This is by no means the first high-profile hack OurMine has managed to carry out. The group has previously taken over other social media accounts, including Google’s Sundar Pichai’s Quora account, and Mark Zuckerberg’s Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and Twitter accounts. But this attack was particularly stinging in that it compromised the social media account that, well, Dorsey founded.
Updated on 7-10-2016: Twitter says it can’t see your Vine password
While all the rogue tweets were quickly removed from Dorsey’s account, they look to have originated from Vine. But while original reports suggested that Dorsey might have been using an old or shared password on the video network, or had otherwise connected his account to a compromised service, Twitter denied that this could be the root cause of the hacking.
“Our Vine admin site is restricted to Twitter IPs, is HTTPs, and never shows passwords in any form. We securely store our passwords per industry best practices,” a Twitter spokesperson told VentureBeat via email. Of course, OurMine is challenging this claim, noting in a blog post that Dorsey’s Dropbox includes “all Vine Files including picture of the control panel of Vine.” The blog post also includes a screenshot of what the hackers claim is proof that those with access to the aforementioned control panel “can see private information” and user passwords.
Dorsey also wasn’t the only tech heavy hitter whose Twitter account was breached during that 24-hour period. Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer and venture capitalist Vinod Khosla also saw breaches to their accounts, both of which were attributed to OurMine. And considering that around 33 million Twitter passwords are reportedly being sold on the dark web, the time to rethink your security on your social media is nigh indeed.
So whether you’re Jack Dorsey or the Jack from Jack and the Beanstalk, bear in mind that no one is safe from hackers in our digital age.
