Twitter ‘Password’ Breach: Next Time Use the Name of Your First Pet!

by Glynnis MacNicol | 9:04 am, July 16th, 2009

» 1 comment

deadtwitter Who knew 140 characters could wield so much power! And cause so much trouble. The story currently making waves in the online media fishbowl is that Twitter has been hacked. Not only that, the hacker sent TechCrunch’s Michael Arrington the documents, some of which Arrington published causing yet another stir to occur regarding the ethics of publishing information that was obtained illegally.

Short version: Someone apparently hacked into the account of the wife of Twitter co-founder Evan Williams and from there got access to Williams’ accounts as well as another employee’s. What this mostly seems to have led to is some personnel information, but also Twitter’s financial forecast (they do intend to make money!), TechCrunch has published the latter. Co-Founder Biz Stone says no one’s personal information was accessed and Twitter has threatened legal action against anyone who published the documents, thus far to little avail.

Twitter has conceded they should have better security measures. And how! Later on yesterday Robin Wauters, also of TechCrunch, revealed that the password Twitter uses for their servers is “password.” Also, “Jack” after the Jack Dorsey, the third Twitter founder. Honestly, you can’t make this stuff up. In light of this, our co-worker Rachel Skar’s admonishment of a few weeks back that Twitter needs to grow up now seems even more apropos!

Gawker, Michael Arrington, Peter Kafka, Tech Crunch, twitter

http://the-w.com/ CRZ

Is “Rachel Skar” Rachel Sklar’s evil twin? Maybe they’re evil triplets, each one more pirate-y than the next, until you reach Rachel ARRRRRRRRR. She’d have a scar AND an eyepatch.

(Even as we speak, Rachel is finding half a dozen different ways to tweet about how her last name was misspelled, all including links to Mediaite, and reminding us how much less she tweets since she lost her Blackberry.)

(But I’m not stalking her or anything.)