back to article Twitter breach gives behind-the-scenes Obama peek

Twitter still hasn't come clean, but it appears yet another administrative account on the micro-blogging site has been breached, giving world+dog an inside peek at the accounts of Barack Obama, Ashton Kutcher, and other celebrities. Screenshots posted on French blog Korben show more than a dozen images purporting to be taken …

COMMENTS

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  1. Xander

    One small issue here

    Not to rain on everyones parade but do you really think for a minute Obi or any of the other "celebrities" actually go within 100 miles of Twitter and it's not just some PR shmuck who runs the account?

  2. zonky
    Stop

    Dear god.

    Why the fuck is there admin page https://admin.twitter.com/admin accessable over the public internet???

    Are they just stupid?

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    You don't have to hack Twitter to know who Perez has fallen out with

    seeing as he orchestrated and religiously blogged Lily Allen blocking him as part of some feud he brewed up to garner himself some publicity, the details of which are far too tedious to be remembered by anyone except my missus and her cronies

  4. Andy Bright

    Real enough

    Various celebrities use all kinds of social networking, you can see them admit to having facebook, myspace or twitter accounts in various interviews and on their own shows. Of course it's also true that fake accounts in their names are created by the thousand.

    As for what any celebrity does or says on Twitter, even if it is the US President, I don't really see why anyone cares. Social networkers appear desperate to believe that minute-by-minute accounts of their lives are in someway important to anyone other than themselves. Keeping something private on a service that specialises in too much information seems almost a violation of the philosophy behind sites like Twitter.

    If you sqawk out your meaningless shit to everyone and everything, what difference does it make if they allow other people to view more of it by borrowing an admin's password?

  5. Robert Moore
    Thumb Down

    Bloggin, facebook, now twitter

    Maybe I am old, but What is the point?

  6. Sureo
    Paris Hilton

    Free advice

    "The site, by the way, recently posted online ads looking for software engineers who specialize in application and infrastructure security."

    They have to hire someone to tell them to use strong passwords? I'm for hire...

  7. Gary F

    Perfect for unemployed people

    People who use Twitter have waaaaay tooooo much time on their hands. I've used it for a week now and it's totally insaine. How can you get any work done if people keep trying to tell you insignificant and trivual things all day. Some tweet every 10 minutes. They need to see a Twitter shrink. It's a total brain fck.

  8. Ian Ferguson
    Flame

    Yahoo hack, not Twitter

    Looking at @goldman's historic tweets, I see he had his Yahoo account hacked. Presumably the hacker reset his Twitter password, or the passwords were the same. Either way, if you work for Twitter, would you really link your account to a free webmail account? And, if you've had your email hacked, surely the first thing to do is to go round other important sites changing passwords?

    Of course I don't know what really happened, but it looks to me like this Jason Goldman fella has been a muppet of the highest order. And Twitter has about as strong security as a padlock made of cheese.

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    So presumably he is...

    ... the twit in twitter

    AC, to avoid the shame.

  10. Steve Evans

    Dictionary passwords?

    OMG! Anyone still using pure alphabetic passwords that can be found in Dr Johnson's 250 year old book really deserve to be lined up against the wall...

    Any that are administrators of anything should be lined up with any of their offspring/siblings just to remove the faulty gene from the pool!

  11. Chris

    Weakest passwords ever?

    I tend to agree with Steve Evans here, in that software being used to brute-force a password using a dictionary attack barely, BARELY qualifies as "hacking into a twitter account".

    Nonetheless, it might make the folks at Twitter consider enforcing some stricter passwords at the account creation process.

    Cbab - http://www.apptheta.com

  12. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    @ Gary F

    I'm minded of Ford Prefect's observations on inane chatter:

    "If they don't keep on exercising their lips, he thought, their brains start working."

  13. Anonymous Coward
    Boffin

    Security!?

    They really need to sack some staff. They are obviously incompetant. Isnt it weird though. There is me and a lot on this website that understand and can cope with high security. Yet the admins of a $15mil site cannot. Twitter get some new goddamn staff.

  14. Anonymous Coward
    Coat

    In the words of Frankie Howard..

    Twitter Ye Not.

  15. Winkypop Silver badge
    Black Helicopters

    @Robert Moore

    Yes, it's just total arse.

    It keeps the sheeple happy as the Govt slowly and royally screws them over.

  16. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Not surprised

    Having worked in IT now for some time and having worked with over 100 seperate sites in that time I can tell you that at least 90% of users (in my experience) still chosse things like "password" or the first part of their email: User Name dojo@monkeyland.com password: dojo

    This extends past the normal users to the admins and Im sad to say quite a few developers in the industry as well!

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