Facebook’s Twitter and Instagram accounts were hacked via a third-party service, and the hackers quickly published a post on both accounts before the intrusion was discovered.
The message posted by the hackers simply read “Well, even Facebook is hackable but at least their security better than Twitter.”
Hacking of verified and important Twitter accounts is quite common. The biggest problem for any online account is that people choose weak passwords, but that’s not the case with the recent incident.
According to a Cnet report, Facebook’s Twitter account was hacked by using a third-party service, which had the right to post to the social network. It’s actually a much bigger problem than figuring out weak passwords, as many other entities likely use the same third-party service.
OurMine is the name of the group responsible for the intrusion, and they’re the same ones who hacked Twitter’s CEO Jack Dorsey’s account as well. They just posted a couple of entries, one for Facebook and one for Instagram mocking Twitter’s apparent bad security.
“As soon as we were made aware of the issue, we locked the compromised accounts and are working closely with our partners at Facebook to restore them,” said a Twitter spokesperson.
While it’s unclear what Twitter will do to prevent such events in the future, this latest problem highlights the importance of two-factor authentication. In a hack just last month, a few Twitter accounts belonging to NFL teams were affected. A BBC story indicated that the third-party tool used by the hackers was Khoros, a marketing platform used by companies to post to Twitter and better track community interaction. Khoros has yet to respond to the allegation.
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