Twitter CEO’s Own Account Hacked

Twitter co-founder and CEO Jack Dorsey admitted today that his own Twitter account has been hacked. Left unsaid by this admission is the fact that even the most highly protected and biggest influencers in social media can’t escape the hacker’s stealthy hand. Dorsey’s followers began noticing earlier today that his account began vomiting out obscenities, irrelevant retweets, shout-outs, racial slurs, and threats. It took nearly an hour before the faux postings were removed by Twitter authorities.
The rogue tweets included numerous posts about a bomb planted at the Twitter headquarters. Others mentioned just first names, such as ‘Kyle’ and ‘Ron’ in shoutouts. A majority of the tweets used the hashtag #ChucklingHella.
Friday evening the company released a tweet saying the CEO’s phone number linked with his Twitter account has been compromised because of security oversights by their mobile provider. Hackers were then able to manipulate the cell phone number to create fake text messages and send them out on a secure channel, using the platform’s own SMS tweeting feature.
The company now says the entire issue has been completely resolved and no further threats to Twitter accounts from this specific set of hackers is to be feared.
Dorsey’s Twitter account was hacked once before, back in 2016, by a group calling itself OurMine.
The incident brings questions about the viability of even the most highly protected accounts for one of the biggest social media companies on the planet. While Dorsey’s Twitter account presented a desirable target and was obviously shielded to the hilt, other high profile accounts, such as that of president Donald Trump, which share the same platform and security firewalls, could in the future become vulnerable to the same kind of hacking attack to spread false reports or even attempt to start hostilities with another nation.
Twitter users have already begun to tweet questions about why it took Twitter so long to discover the hack and rectify it.