Although Twitter enjoys great popularity among adult industry members, the nature of this security breach holds insight for how webmasters in any industry should conduct business and manage their affairs online.
The attack happened in May but only now are Twitter officials becoming aware of it. The hacker behind the attack operates under the handle Hacker Croll. Croll acquired the password information by simply going through Yahoo's password retrieval system, which asks users to answer a simple security question. Typical questions ask for the name of the user's first pet or for their mother's maiden name.
Croll hacked the webmail accounts of several top Twitter officials, including product management director Jason Goldman and compamy co-founder Evan Williams. Once inside these private e-mail accounts, he collected loads of sensitive information about the inner workings of the company and sent them to major online news outlets. So far, none has posted anything.
But this isn't the first high-profile hacking of a Yahoo email account. During last year's presidential campaign, University of Tennessee student David Kernell used the same technique to hack into then-vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin.
What's the defense against this kind of hacking? Don't answer those security questions. Instead, simply paste an encrypted key word into those fields.
