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Dutch Ethical Hacker Logs into Trump’s Twitter Account
- zeestar 6y agoI think it’s hilarious Trump’s account was compromised but calling a nerd who steals accounts an ethical hacker is like calling someone who steals elections an ethical president. Hope they lock him up. Both of ‘em.
- hevelvarik 6y agoI though that too, well the part about the hacker anyway, until I ... read the article. They are ‘ethical’ hackers in the sense that they immediately informed the Trump administration. Whether that’s actually ethical or not is a tangential discussion because the existence and application of term is not controversial.
- snicky 6y agoEthical hackers hack for fame and money, but they don't blackmail or disclose any information that could harm anybody. Lots of companies already take part in bug bounty programs with explicit rewards for hackers or implement "coordinated vulnerability disclosure" (CVD).
- zeestar 6y agoI read the article too, mate. It doesn't change my mind on the matter. If someone broke into my house, my righteous indignation would not be assuaged by their refusal to steal and immediate disclosure to me of how easily my lock was compromised.
- webel0 6y agoTrump had a hilariously bad password. But it appears that twitter has even worse password protection policies. The account was “hacked” by manually entering several different password ideas into Twitter’s login. The guy got it on the fifth try. Why not lock it down sooner?
- nicoburns 6y agoBefore 5 attempts? That's well within the range of a few careless typos. If he'd tried thousands of attempts then sure, but 5 seems completely reasonable.
- Jorsiem 6y agoHe had a password you could guess in 5 tries and didnt have 2FA and your blaming Twitter?
- sheepdestroyer 6y agoI find the hacker mischievously hilarious : "The question remains why Trump was using such a weak and simple password. Gevers has a possible explanation: ‘Trump is over 70 – elderly people often switch off two-step verification because they find it too complicated."
- rexreed 6y agoYes. Twitter shouldn't treat a random person's account the same way they treat someone who wields a ridiculous amount of power and influence. Typical person: 5 tries and no 2FA, that's ok (I Guess) President: 5 tries and no 2FA? Twitter shouldn't have applied same ol' same ol' policies. Sometimes you need to provide differential security. After all, the president doesn't ride around in an unprotected car even though pretty much everyone else does.
- xenospn 6y agoIf you ever had to manage a site that had user accounts, you'd have realized that locking down access before the 5th attempt is a recipe for an insane amount of user frustration.
- pelliphant 6y agoIf I got locked out from any of my accounts for just typing in the wrong password 5 times, a few seconds apart, I would get kinda pissed.
- 6y ago
- hoppla 6y agoIf you could send a single tweet as trump, what would it be?
- krapp 6y agoI, Donald Trump, shall resign the Presidency effective at noon tomorrow.
- hestefisk 6y ago‘The Russians did it.’
- athenot 6y ago"And change the combination on my luggage."
- RobRivera 6y agoI appreciate this Spaceballs reference.
- selectodude 6y ago"Tesla is hereby banned from selling cars in the United States"
- thsealienbstrds 6y agoMake my password great again
- LarvaFX 6y ago"ORDERED the NUKES on BEIJING! We have the best weapons, we use them!" -- is something I wouldn't say.
- taejo 6y agoThe previous celebrity president already did that one. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kifJ_mQdpZA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kifJ_mQdpZA
- 6y ago
- easterncalculus 6y ago> Hunter Biden used an easy to guess password (Hunter02) Truth* is stranger than fiction. Or at least funnier. http://bash.org/?244321 http://bash.org/?244321 * Apparently not truth, see below. Interesting to some degree nonetheless.
- mxcrossb 6y agoThe full context: > A hard disk owned by presidential candidate Joe Biden’s son was supposedly stolen or hacked – also because Hunter Biden used an easy to guess password (Hunter02). Gevers is familiar with leaked databases of old passwords and searched these for Hunter Biden’s data. After analysing these old databases, he felt that the information was incorrect. Hunter Biden used other passwords. Gevers: ‘I could tell that it wasn’t his password.’ So this is not truth. But what I don’t know is if Gevers just read that online from a jokester, or if Trump’s people are actually claiming this.
- sushshshsh 6y ago"oh, ok" the internet was such a better place in the 90s. now if someone gets your password in 2020 they can basically destroy your credit and social reputation
- dyslexit 6y agoI think the story is implying that it wasn't his actual password: >Gevers is familiar with leaked databases of old passwords and searched these for Hunter Biden’s data. After analysing these old databases, he felt that the information was incorrect. Hunter Biden used other passwords. Gevers: ‘I could tell that it wasn’t his password.’ It's much more insane to me that the President of the United States has a twitter account with no 2FA and the password 'maga2020'.
- Santosh83 6y agoAre you seriously saying the President of the United States' Twitter a/c hasn't been secured by a strong password, or better yet, managed for him by his PA?? This is frankly not believable. Doesn't the Secret Service have a digital wing to secure such things?
- easterncalculus 6y agoWell @realDonaldTrump isn't @POTUS, it's his personal account as far as I know. So that could be why, maybe.
- hevelvarik 6y agoI recall there being a story about Obama either not being able to use his first choice of phone or else there having had to have been made some sort of accommodation to allow him to at the beginning of his first term. (I think it was an iPhone vs Blackberry thing) I haven’t looked into this story too deeply but I find it incredible on its face. If it is true then it’s an absolute shock and a wonder of wonders why it wasn’t compromised sooner.
- gondo 6y ago“Too inconvenient” https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/may/22/donald-trump-shuns-white-house-iphone-security-inconvenient-reports-say https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/may/22/donald-tr...
- ameliaquining 6y agoIIUC at the beginning of Trump's term he refused to agree to the arrangements that the Secret Service made for Obama and insisted on continuing to use his regular phone instead. And there wasn't a whole lot they could do about it. After all, he's the boss.
- mhoad 6y agoI'm not sure why you are getting down voted. That is 100% a true story unfortunately.
- chrisshroba 6y agoIt seems like Twitter should require 2fa for certain accounts, if not for the damage it could do to the US if Trump's account were compromised (personal endorsements, inventing crises like the fake Hawaiian missile crisis, scam links to solicit money, etc.), then for Twitter's reputation as a platform people can trust. If they didn't want to inconsistently enforce the rules for individuals, they could have a policy like any account with at least xx million followers must implement 2fa. What incentive do they have to not do something like this? Surely anyone with millions of followers isn't going to leave Twitter because of this requirement (new users might, hence only requiring it for accounts of a certain size)
- krageon 6y agoThere's nothing that account could say now that would damage the US more than it already has.
- boxed 6y agoTrump will gladly accept that challenge and prove you wrong as he has so many times before. There is always a new low to be achieved.
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 6y agoI always had a joke theory that it was hacked long ago and keeps posting outrageous things. Rather than admit he was hacked Trump has to actually do those outrageous things.
- krageon 6y agoThis is a great premise to a short story
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- louwrentius 6y ago> On Friday morning, almost absentmindedly, Gevers tries a number of passwords and their variations. On the fifth attempt: bingo! He tries ‘maga2020!’ (short for make America great again) and suddenly finds himself in the Twitter account of the American President. He is flabbergasted. Gevers: ‘I expected to be blocked after four failed attempts. Or at least would be asked to provide additional information.’ None of that.
- llimos 6y agoI wonder when he changed it from 'maga2016!'?
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- alexdig 6y agoThis is mind-boggling, but it also makes you think why no one has tried it before.
- duxup 6y agoTo the point that I'm pretty skeptical.
- mattnewton 6y agoOr they did and told nobody.
- CommieBobDole 6y agoThis seems odd to me. I would assume that people would try to break into Trump's account hundreds or thousands of times a day - it's a high-profile (maybe the highest profile) account that billions of people are aware of and have the capability to attack. If his password was that obvious, one would assume it would be guessed almost instantaneously. Maybe it had just been changed from something un-guessable minutes before, or some glitch disabled 2FA?
- pelliphant 6y agoI would love for this to be true, but I agree, it does seem way too unlikely that no one else would have tried that password....
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- UncleOxidant 6y agoThe guy showed tremendous restraint. Most of us would've posted something that wouldn't have been flattering.
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- UncleOxidant 6y agoLots of strangeness happening in these comments.
- andrewflnr 6y agoPresumably someone found it extremely low-substance and off-topic, enough to go farther than downvoting. You could reasonably argue it's flamebait.
- nostromo 6y agoThis is almost assuredly fake news, folks. (Of course this is being downvoted, because why would anyone let the truth get in the way of a good story.) https://techcrunch.com/2020/10/22/dutch-hacker-trump-twitter-account-password/ https://techcrunch.com/2020/10/22/dutch-hacker-trump-twitter... > In a statement, Twitter spokesperson Ian Plunkett said: “We’ve seen no evidence to corroborate this claim, including from the article published in the Netherlands today. We proactively implemented account security measures for a designated group of high-profile, election-related Twitter accounts in the United States, including federal branches of government.” > Trump’s account is said to be locked down with extra protections after he became president, though Twitter has not said publicly what those protections entail. His account was untouched by hackers who broke into Twitter’s network in July in order to abuse an “admin tool” to hijack high-profile accounts and spread a cryptocurrency scam. > A spokesperson for the White House and the Trump campaign did not immediately comment, but White House deputy press secretary Judd Deere reportedly said the story is “absolutely not true,” but declined to comment on the president’s social media security. A spokesperson for CISA did not immediately confirm the report.
- andlarry 6y agoI just posted the guardian version because I didn’t see yours. “maga2020!” and no proof, ridiculous. Easy to believe something crazy if you want to believe it, I guess.
- rvz 6y agoWell they (The Guardian) did the same baseless reporting on the 'death of Kim Jong Un' and nearly all of them and Twitter falsly reported it and some users believed it (with little to no evidence.) Now, this time it's a single screenshot used as substantial 'proof' to support this Twitter hack. However, it is not good enough to suggest that it is genuine as it can be easily faked. So it seems some choose to believe claims without the actual facts and evidence unfolding over time but what's clear on Twitter and in this comments section is the number of users having symptoms of TDS. At least wait a bit until this fully develops rather than believing unverified reports or claims. We're much better than this.
- duxup 6y agoIs there any verification of this claim? It is hard to imagine someone wouldn't have guessed that password before.
- rvz 6y agoI would love to see verification of this claim or video evidence too. Even a letter from the White House to confirm saying 'Thanks' for your work. Unfortunately that screenshot alone can be edited to be faked and it is the only screenshot used as 'proof' that he was 'hacked'. It that's the case then this can be easily dismissed as fake news. Such a shame it was spread from 'news sites' like the Guardian. Who checks the Factcheckers eh?
- duxup 6y agoI don't know the order of their stories was or what was said when but the guardian at least did get a 'um nope' style quote up from Twitter.
- encom 6y agoLink is unreadable. Archive mirror: https://archive.ph/Kkb58 https://archive.ph/Kkb58 Also, this story is unbelievable. As in I literally do not believe it. >"He tries ‘maga2020!’ (short for make America great again) and suddenly finds himself in the Twitter account of the American President." And then everyone clapped!
- andlarry 6y ago> Twitter, however, denied the report. “We’ve seen no evidence to corroborate this claim, including from the article published in the Netherlands today. We proactively implemented account security measures for a designated group of high-profile, election-related Twitter accounts in the United States, including federal branches of government,” a Twitter spokesperson said in a statement. [0] [0] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/oct/22/trump-twitter-hacked-dutch-researcher-password https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/oct/22/trump-twitte...
- jacquesm 6y agoYes, there are some conflicting statements in the media. The Dutch reporters claim to have seen proof. Of course Twitter has nothing to lose from admitting that it did happen. Also, this guy has a reasonably good reputation here, and would stand to lose his career from making a claim that was found out to be false. I wouldn't dismiss it out of hand just yet.
- gnomesteel 6y ago>Twitter has nothing to lose from admitting that it did happen Um, what? That would be exceptionally bad press for Twitter.
- ziml77 6y agoAre there any other sources that back this up? It wouldn't surprise me if this was true, but given just how insane this is I'd like some confirmation before I start spreading it as truth to anyone.
- marten-de-vries 6y agoThe original story is by the Dutch magazine 'Vrij Nederland': https://www.vn.nl/trump-twitter-hacked-again/ https://www.vn.nl/trump-twitter-hacked-again/ . Most Dutch news media run the story currently, including broadcasters NOS and RTL, news sites nu.nl and Tweakers, and (the websites of) newspapers Volkskrant, Parool, Telegraaf. As andlarry writes in another comment, The Guardian seems to have a quote from Twitter denying the story, though: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/oct/22/trump-twitter-hacked-dutch-researcher-password https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/oct/22/trump-twitte...