So this is what communication mania is making out of us and web2.0 creatives:
Somehow we -consumers and deciders- are totally horny of being part of the bigbuzz communities we simply forgot about security.
So this happened:
A hacker gained access to several Twitter accounts by brut force – among them Barack Obamas and Britney Spears’. Twitter was already known for having security isuues do to unencrypted password transmission. Well, here’s a video that explains what he did:
Official Twitter feeds belonging to Barack Obama’s campaign, Fox News and Britney Spears were hijacked to send out fake messages on Monday, two days after a password-stealing phishing attack targeted the microblogging service.
“A number of high-profile Twitter accounts were compromised this morning, and fake/spam updates were sent on their behalf,” the company acknowledged on its website Monday. “We have identified the cause and blocked it. We are working to restore compromised accounts.”
Read on at wired.com
Jan 07
Wednesday, January 7th, 2009| 12:54 pm | Filed under tech, web.
2 Comments Britney & Baracks Twitter accounts hacked
Markus
January 7th, 2009 at 8:15 pm
1It destroys the overall trust in Web 2.0 tools if they are highjacked often and misused. That’s bad because people will stop using them and be more and more cautious on the information they provide. That reduces the transparency of the internet. But we are indeed naive if we do not learn some basic steps on how to hide information when necessary. And further, crime prosecution is necessary: If one steals private data, this is the same as if you steal material goods. And of course you need to prosecute that. If law officials are not able to track down these thieves, then I wonder why we allow these technologies at all.
But this case I believe is just a marketing gag that did not work out – high profile twitter account? Do we really believe that Barack Obama uses a private PC to send twitter messages around?
On the other hand this is useful: we all just need to learn that if we offer private content on ourselves, that of course it can be misused.
A child knows that if gets a banking card, this is private and not official. Important messages should not be adressed with a tool that you do not use for long time. Still surprising how few people use pgp-mails – propably because there is still a lot of trust and that is good thing.
Jesus Presley
January 8th, 2009 at 11:27 pm
2I agree on the trust reducing issue.
On the other hand: It’s just twitter accounts. Of course I’d go berserk if someone had hacked mine – but I hope I still know how to live without it.
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