DailyTech - Twitter Pursuing Dual-Factor Authentication After 250,000 User Accounts Were Hacked

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Internet Twitter Pursuing Dual-Factor Authentication After 250,000 User Accounts Were Hacked
Shane McGlaun (Blog) - February 5, 2013 10:03 AM

2 comment(s) - last by Trisped.. on Feb 5 at 10:55 PM

Better security in the works at Twitter

A few days ago, Twitter announced that it had detected a series of attempts to hacking the user accounts by unknown sources. Twitter says that the hack could have resulted in some of the accounts being compromised and the hackers stealing data. In response to the potential hack, Twitter moved to revoke the security tokens of all 250,000 user accounts and reset the passwords.

It looks like Twitter is now set to significantly increase the security on its user accounts. A job posting from Twitter is seeking a new worker to increase security by implementing two-factor authentication. Two-factor authentication will make it nearly impossible for hackers to gain access to accounts even if they know the password.

Graham Cluley from security company Sophos said, "This is a splendid idea – I'm looking forward to it. It's something that we've wanted for some time. We've often said we would be prepared to pay for it – Twitter could monetize it by offering it to corporations and branded accounts. It would be pretty attractive."

Various other major websites use two-factor authentication including Google. The Twitter two-factor authentication service is expected to work similarly to the system used with Gmail. With Gmail, when the e-mail account is accessed from an unauthorized device a pin number is required that is sent to the account owner's phone number.

Sources: CBS News, Guardian

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This article is over a month old, voting and posting comments is disabled

Maybe they should encrypt the LOGIN page?!

By quiksilvr on 2/5/2013 12:12:38 PM , Rating: 2

HMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM I wonder what happens when people log in with their username and password on a page that isn't https? Oh yeah, that's right. A totally open cookie is created ripe for the pickin'.

Thank god I use the Disconnect extension on Chrome (I believe its also available on Firefox as well). It forces https on major sites like facebook, twitter, google, yahoo and linkedin if it is available.