A few days ago the Twitter account of  Newsweek was hacked by ISIS aligned hackers who call themselves the Cypher Caliphate. They sent out threatening tweets including some to First Lady, Michelle Obama.  On the same day, the same ISIS sympathizers hacked into the Twitter account of a veteran’s organization called the Military Spouses of Strength.  In December this same group of hackers hacked into the Twitter account of the United States Central Command.  In a rather surprising Twitter hacking this week, Anthony Noto, the Chief Financial Officer of Twitter had his Twitter account compromised as well, although this hacking was not ISIS related.

TIPS

Twitter accounts are rather easy to hack into if you merely use a password instead of the dual factor authentication that Twitter has made available since 2013.  It would appear that Twitter’s CFO, Anthony Noto was not using the enhanced security made available by his own company.  The lesson here is a simple one.  Whenever possible, you should use dual factor authentication with all of your accounts.  It provides dramatically enhanced security.  None of the Twitter hackings I described would have been accomplished had the account holders used dual factor authentication by which when someone logs in to Twitter, they are sent a six-digit code on their smartphone to insert in order to access their account.  It takes only a few seconds more to do, but makes your account much safer from hacking.