Twitter Hack Details Revealed

Jack Spine writes "Twitter co-founder Biz Stone has confirmed both to ZDNet UK and Wired's Threat Level blog that a dictionary attack was used to hack Twitter. After the hacker distributed details on the Digital Gangster forum, celebrities such as Britney Spears and Barack Obama had their accounts defaced. Wired spoke to the alleged hacker, while ZDNet UK got in contact with someone who had been on the Digital Gangster forum at the time."

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Re:iam3prez

[Mr. Sketch]

Looks like you didn't actually read the article. The account of a twitter admin was hacked with a dictionary attack. That account was then used to reset the passwords for various other accounts (Fox News, Obama, Britney Spears, etc) to gain access to those accounts. The original passwords for those additional accounts were not obtained. Only one account (the twitter admin) was hacked, the rest just had their passwords reset.

Re:Compromise One Password, Compromise Them All

[SighKoPath]

FTA:

GMZ doesn't know what the reset passwords were, because Twitter resets them randomly with a 12-character string of numbers and letters.

No passwords were compromised except for the admin account he used the dictionary attack on. So really, the GP's analysis of harm done is pretty accurate.