Spammers managed to tweet almost 300 times in the eight minutes they had control of Twitter CFO Anthony Noto’s account
Twitter just isn’t having a good day at all. First Newsweek‘s account was hacked and used by a militant group to threaten the Obama family. Now the company’s own chief financial officer had his account taken over by hackers.
Twitter takes back CFO’s account
A spokesperson for the micro-blogging platform acknowledged that CFO Anthony Noto’s Twitter account had been seized by hackers. The company has since purged the account of the hackers’ posts, but according to CNBC‘s Ben Berkowitz, all the tweets looked like spam.
They reportedly looked like direct replies to tweets from other users which included spam links. In just eight minutes, the hackers pushed out nearly 300 tweets. Twitter had deleted all of them by 2:25 p.m. Eastern.
Security issues on Twitter
Bloomberg‘s Sarah Frier reports that a spokesperson for Twitter said there weren’t any signs that any account information was taken or just how the hackers sent the tweets. The spokesperson would not say whether Noto uses two-step authentication on his account.
Twitter rolled out the security feature in 2013 to protect users’ accounts by making it harder for hackers to seize control. However, if all the recent hacks on Twitter accounts are any indication, clearly there is more the micro-blogging platform should be able to do to lock down its users’ accounts.
If Noto isn’t using two-step authentication, then perhaps he could use some lessons on how to use his company’s social network. He was in the limelight last year when he bungled a private message about an acquisition they were working on by tweeting it publicly rather than sending it as a private message.
FBI investigates Newsweek Twitter hack
Meanwhile the FBI is investigating the hack of Newsweek‘s Twitter account that happened earlier today. A spokesperson for the White House told the media that the agency has launched an investigation into the threats that were posted on the account.
It appears as if a different group was responsible for the two cyber-attacks, as the Newsweek hack was much more serious. A group that claimed to be linked with ISIS took responsibility for the hack on Newsweek‘s account, on which the hackers tweeted threats against First Lady Michelle Obama and her family.
