How Activist DeRay Mckesson's Twitter Account Was Hacked

Posted by msmash on Sunday June 12, 2016 @01:30AM from the security-woes dept.

Racial justice activist DeRay Mckesson became the most recent victim of a high-profile Twitter account hack. Mckesson this week started to endorse for Donald Trump and posted a self-defamatory tweet. Later he announced that his account was hacked. What's interesting about this hack was that Mckesson had two-factor authentication enabled on "all" of his accounts. Hackers apparently resorted to a much-sophisticated attack: Hacker or hackers were able to take over by convincing Verizon to reset his SIM. With the SIM reset, the person responsible was able to receive text messages intended for Mckesson and therefore bypass the two-factor authentication the activist used to keep his account secure.

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Re:SMS was never true 2-factor by Anonymous Coward · 2016-06-12 01:58 · Score: 2, Insightful

I know some people leave their phones laying all about, but good luck getting the SIM out of my phone without me being aware of it, or dead.
Re:Trump 2016 by I'm+New+Around+Here · 2016-06-12 04:12 · Score: 2, Insightful

It worked well for Obama.
Twice.

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If you think I voted for Trump because of this post, you're wrong. I voted for Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party. Again.