What Remains After the Massive Twitter Hack...With Trump Completely Left Out?

Temporary Tweet Sending Suspension on Some Twitter Accounts
Additional Security Measures on President Trump’s Account to Prevent Hacking

[Asia Economy Reporter Jin-gyu Lee] From former U.S. President Barack Obama to Microsoft (MS) founder Bill Gates, the Twitter accounts of famous American figures were hacked one after another. The list of hacking victims included a large number of prominent figures such as Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla, and Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon, but only U.S. President Donald Trump was able to avoid this.

On the 15th (local time), official Twitter accounts of famous American figures posted a message saying, "Send $1,000 (about 1.2 million KRW) in Bitcoin within 30 minutes, and we will return double the amount," which was later deleted. Twitter judged that users' passwords were not stolen. Twitter stated, "There is no evidence that hackers accessed passwords," and "At this time, we do not believe users need to reset their passwords."

Twitter accounts that have changed their passwords within the last 30 days may be blocked from access. This is a measure taken by Twitter to prevent additional hacking incidents. Twitter also took measures such as temporarily blocking tweet sending for some accounts due to this hacking incident. Twitter said, "We will take significant measures to restrict access to internal systems and tools while the investigation is ongoing." However, Twitter is still investigating how the hacking occurred and has not disclosed whether other information such as private messages related to the hacked accounts was compromised.

This is not the first hacking incident involving famous people's Twitter accounts. In May, American actress Chloe Moretz's Twitter account was hacked, and messages containing profanity were sent to her 3.1 million followers. In August last year, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey's account was hacked, and tweets containing racial slurs and messages such as "Hitler is innocent" were posted on his account. In November 2017, President Trump's Twitter account was deactivated for 11 minutes. The investigation revealed that it was the act of a Twitter employee who was about to resign.

Security experts advise that to prevent hacking incidents on social networking services (SNS) like Twitter, users should frequently change their passwords and enable "two-factor authentication login." A security industry official explained, "If two-factor authentication login is set, users can be notified via text message about account login attempts from other devices, which helps prevent hacking incidents." He added, "Users should also frequently change their account passwords and avoid clicking on emails or URL links from unknown sources."

Meanwhile, there is growing interest in whether this hacking incident will bring changes to President Trump's means of communication with the public. President Trump has long used Twitter as a tool for public communication. He often announced personnel changes such as dismissals and appointments, as well as his positions on major domestic and international issues through Twitter. However, the White House judged that President Trump's Twitter account, which has additional security measures applied, is safe and stated that President Trump will continue to use Twitter.