Twitter hacker accesses Obama, Spears, O'Reilly, and more
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Stumble ThisThe hacker gained access to an admin's account on Twitter, and went on to reset passwords - which allowed people to then get into other accounts, including the news feed for Fox News, the Obama Twitter, and a lewd Britney Spears hack too.
Kind of hilarious - this video was posted by the hacker as proof of his exploit.
Courtesy Wired:
"An 18-year-old hacker with a history of celebrity pranks has admitted to Monday's hijacking of multiple high-profile Twitter accounts, including President-Elect Barack Obama's, and the official feed for Fox News.
The hacker, who goes by the handle GMZ, told Threat Level on Tuesday he gained entry to Twitter's administrative control panel by pointing an automated password-guesser at a popular user's account. The user turned out to be a member of Twitter's support staff, who'd chosen the weak password "happiness."
Cracking the site was easy, because Twitter allowed an unlimited number of rapid-fire log-in attempts.
"I feel it's another case of administrators not putting forth effort toward one of the most obvious and overused security flaws," he wrote in an IM interview. "I'm sure they find it difficult to admit it."
The hacker identified himself only as an 18-year-old student on the East Coast. He agreed to an interview with Threat Level on Tuesday after other hackers implicated him in the attack. "
Kind of hilarious - this video was posted by the hacker as proof of his exploit.
Courtesy Wired:
"An 18-year-old hacker with a history of celebrity pranks has admitted to Monday's hijacking of multiple high-profile Twitter accounts, including President-Elect Barack Obama's, and the official feed for Fox News.
The hacker, who goes by the handle GMZ, told Threat Level on Tuesday he gained entry to Twitter's administrative control panel by pointing an automated password-guesser at a popular user's account. The user turned out to be a member of Twitter's support staff, who'd chosen the weak password "happiness."
Cracking the site was easy, because Twitter allowed an unlimited number of rapid-fire log-in attempts.
"I feel it's another case of administrators not putting forth effort toward one of the most obvious and overused security flaws," he wrote in an IM interview. "I'm sure they find it difficult to admit it."
The hacker identified himself only as an 18-year-old student on the East Coast. He agreed to an interview with Threat Level on Tuesday after other hackers implicated him in the attack. "
"Something is technically wrong.
Thanks for noticing—we're going to fix it up and have things back to normal soon."
Aha.
Oh, and the Twitter admin's password? "Happiness"
Nice.
Kind of insane that they just leave the admin tools lying around like that, all exposed and linked-in to 'ordinary' twitter accounts.