James Delahunty
1 Sep 2019 19:19
It is not uncommon for Twitter and other social media accounts to be hijacked and used for malicious reasons, but it is particularly embarrassing when it happens to the chief executive, and not for the first time.
Twitter chief Jack Dorsey was a victim of account theft this weekend. On Friday, the CEO's account - which has four million followers - was hijacked. Those in control of Mr Dorsey's account then went on to publish racist tweets and to retweet other content. Later on Friday, the social media firm noticed the breach and secured Dorsey's account.
According to Twitter, the breach happened because of a security insight by the mobile provider linked to Dorsey's account. This technique is called a SIM swapping attack, in which a mobile provider is duped into transferring a victim's phone number to a SIM card controlled by a malicious party.
Dorsey was targeted in a separate hack in 2016, along with Google chief Sundar Pichai and Facebook chief Mark Zuckerberg.
"This allowed an unauthorized person to compose and send tweets via text message from the phone number. That issue is now resolved," Twitter said>/a>. It was an isolated case and there was no indication of a wider system breach.
The offensive tweets were live for about an hour before they were deleted, and there are reports that accounts that had been retweeted have been suspended also.