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Dutch Prosecutors Find a Hacker Did Successfully Log Into Donald Trump's Twitter Account (bbc.com) 96

Dutch prosecutors have found a hacker did successfully log in to Donald Trump's Twitter account by guessing his password -- "MAGA2020!" From a report: But they will not be punishing Victor Gevers, who was acting "ethically." Mr Gevers shared what he said were screenshots of the inside of Mr Trump's account on 22 October, during the final stages of the US presidential election. But at the time, the White House denied it had been hacked and Twitter said it had no evidence of it. Mr Gevers said he was very happy with the outcome. "This is not just about my work but all volunteers who look for vulnerabilities in the internet," he said. The well respected cyber-security researcher said he had been conducting a semi-regular sweep of the Twitter accounts of high-profile US election candidates, on 16 October, when he had guessed President Trump's password.
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Dutch Prosecutors Find a Hacker Did Successfully Log Into Donald Trump's Twitter Account

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  • by Subm ( 79417 ) on Wednesday December 16, 2020 @12:42PM (#60838046)

    > "MAGA2020!"

    Definitely not the combination to my luggage!

    • by gnasher719 ( 869701 ) on Wednesday December 16, 2020 @01:10PM (#60838140)
      I tried all democrat accounts I could find, and couldn't unlock any with MAGA2020! so I find it is a very, very secure password, and republicans should keep using it.
    • Who won the pool for the password: I had "bigly"
    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      by DarkOx ( 621550 )

      I know you can't stand it; Trump is once again one step ahead of you. He knows sooner or later he will slip up and post something that would not play right with his base.

      Using a crappy password is a great hedge. He could always claim his account was hacked, and once his password was revealed, embarrassing though it might be better politically that whatever might have outraged his supporters.

       

      • really.
        and replace the 17th with what
      • by shanen ( 462549 )

        Sounds like 3D chess, but "He who need not be named" still hasn't figured out how to flip a coin properly.

      • by WierdUncle ( 6807634 ) on Wednesday December 16, 2020 @06:00PM (#60839198)

        Mr President, sir, I have some bad news. Your Twitter account has been compromised.

        This is really bad! Do something about it, or you're fired! How did you find out?

        Well, sir, there was a series of tweets that were somewhat out of character.

        What do you mean, out of character?

        They were written in good English, sir, by someone who did not appear to be a petulant five-year-old kid.

        You're fired!

    • by mallyn ( 136041 )
      It *was* the combination of the lock on a very junked up bicycle I had as a child. Last I know, that lock is rusted shut after 60 years and is still on the bicycle rack at Wedge Pond in Winchester, Massachusetts. Tell them Mark Allyn sent you there with love!
    • by tsa ( 15680 )

      Trump’s new password is I WON THE ELECTION!

  • Blame the con artist (Score:3, Interesting)

    by smooth wombat ( 796938 ) on Wednesday December 16, 2020 @12:45PM (#60838060) Journal
    Just like those on here will blame a company for not using secure passwords or what not, this issue falls squarely on the con artist for using such an easy, guessable, password.

    The only thing he does keep secure are his bank records to hide his money laundering. Fortunately, judges keep telling him he has to hand over such documents, among others [cnn.com], for the New York AG to look at after Michael Cohen informed courts the con artist may be committing fraud.
    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      The only thing he does keep secure are his bank records to hide his money laundering. Fortunately, judges keep telling him he has to hand over such documents, among others [cnn.com], for the New York AG to look at after Michael Cohen informed courts the con artist may be committing fraud.

      He does not. People do that for him. One of the few "nice" things about USA fraud statutes is that it takes very little for them to get a nice RICO icing on top. Then both the initiator (Trump) and all the ones who helped him get the Alcatras treatment.

      • Re: (Score:1, Troll)

        by stabiesoft ( 733417 )
        Someone mod this up. I doubt trump even looks at his bank account statements. way way way too many numbers. Reports indicate he cannot manage to read a one page summary of the PDB.
    • by cusco ( 717999 )

      Not sure I'd refer to him as an 'artist', he's more of a laborer.

  • by Frank Burly ( 4247955 ) on Wednesday December 16, 2020 @12:50PM (#60838072)
    At least the hacker didn't post something idiotic that would embarrass the President.
    • At least the hacker didn't post something idiotic that would embarrass the President.

      Well... his posts were in Dutch, but no one noticed -- just thought it was another covfefe [wikipedia.org] day for Trump ... :-)

    • Excuse me, but I did that joke better, the last time. :)

      (Still appreciated. :)

    • At least the hacker didn't post something idiotic that would embarrass the President.

      Posting something idiotic that would embarrass President Trump is the main duty and job function of Donald Trump. He is perfectly capable of doing that without any external help or assistance.

      • by ebvwfbw ( 864834 )

        At least the hacker didn't post something idiotic that would embarrass the President.

        Posting something idiotic that would embarrass President Trump is the main duty and job function of Donald Trump. He is perfectly capable of doing that without any external help or assistance.

        LOL, Just wait until Joe does his tweets. Mr. Gaff himself.

    • by habig ( 12787 )
      But wait... if 4chan had guessed this back in 2015, it would explain a whole lot of stuff that has happened since.
  • by SirSlud ( 67381 ) on Wednesday December 16, 2020 @12:56PM (#60838090) Homepage

    about Trump is by the time he's set the bar for ineptness, another day brings new news to set a new one

  • by aaarrrgggh ( 9205 ) on Wednesday December 16, 2020 @01:03PM (#60838114)
    I so look forward to a boring few years where the President doesn’t try to make himself the center of the news cycle continuously.
    • You will be looking at this in a few centuries time if at all.

      Trump is simply taking everything to the extreme. Everyone rules by "polling and public opinion" at present. Nobody actually tries to govern and look at where his country should be going.

    • Breaking news: America did nothing today that invoked laughter on the world stage, comedy futures fall to an all time low. More at 11.

  • by bradley13 ( 1118935 ) on Wednesday December 16, 2020 @01:09PM (#60838138) Homepage

    Seriously? A prominent account that you *know* is going to be a target. And you have a guessable passwrod and no 2FA in place?

    I'm sure the Whitehouse has IT security people. This is kind of pathetic...

    • 1. I am not surprised.

      2. I am even less surprised that a claim about hacking by USA government supported by their security services has been proven patently false in the court of law. Pity it does not happen more often.

    • I'm sure they do too. But guess who gets to override any suggestions/requirements. Much like clearances that never should have been granted.
    • by U0K ( 6195040 )
      I am sure they do have IT security experts.
      What I'm not sure about is how effective those will be if the biggest security risk is a learning resistant human error. After all, according to how Donald Trump presents himself to the public, he is someone who thinks himself to be more knowledgeable than any expert on any given topic.
    • Are we surprised? This is the same person that refused to give up his Android smart phone that had known, serious vulnerabilities because it was many generations behind.
    • Remember when Obama came into office he was told that he could no longer use his personal Blackberry, which annoyed the president but he followed the rules. Trump likely was told that a private Twitter account also should not be used (or a private email server as well), and he said "I'm the leader of the free world, you can't tell me what to do! Besides, I will pardon myself." Trump has always ignored the rules, even before he became president.

      • Re: (Score:1, Offtopic)

        by kenh ( 9056 )

        Oh, remember when Hillary stepped into the state department and was told to use official email, and she refused?

        When she was told to not use personal devices, and instead used several?

        When she was told she couldn't bring her cellphone into a SCIF, but did anyways?

        Yeah, that was back when no one cared what government officials did, because Obama was President.

      • by ebvwfbw ( 864834 )

        He was told he couldn't use his blackberry because it wasn't hardened. They did the same thing with Trump. Trump unlike Obama follows the rules and court decisions. He's been very good about that.

        • Ha! Trump is the one proposing to bypass rules and court decisions with regards to the elections. He certainly ingored rules about emoluments. There are rules for government officers regarding how private communication accounts may be used, and Trump definitely used Twitter for what appeared to be official communications. Trump for many decades, or his whole life, has not been a rule follower and has found ways to skirt, bypass, or ignore rules and regulations.

    • Are you going to tell the president he's fixing his security now or else? (Or else, what, anyway?)
      Also, I don't think he told them the password.

    • by cusco ( 717999 )

      White House security people do whatever the frack they're told. They "lost" 21 million emails for the Shrub Madministration (supposedly with no backups), let Rice and Powell use webmail accounts for State Department business, and permitted Clinton to hook her home email server to the State Department's so that she could continue to use her insecure Crackberry.

      • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

        by kenh ( 9056 )

        What a stupid, easily-disprovable lie.

        Here's a reasonable news report of the event: https://www.jacksonville.com/r... [jacksonville.com]

        And here's the salient point:

        In December 2009, however, the Obama administration reported that it had recovered roughly 22 million Bush administration emails from 2003-2005. The emails had been mislabeled, not deleted. A settlement negotiated between CREW and the National Security Archives and the Obama administration, which inherited the lawsuits, allowed for the release of 94 days worth of emails, as trying to recover all of the lost data would have been too expensive.

        The emails were mislabeled and eventually found.

    • Did you really think for a moment Trump would put considerations of security over convenience ?

    • by kenh ( 9056 )

      This is a Twitter account, does Twitter support 2FA for user accounts?

  • by JoeyRox ( 2711699 ) on Wednesday December 16, 2020 @01:15PM (#60838156)
    For instance, by posting a sane and reasonable tweet.
  • by hey! ( 33014 ) on Wednesday December 16, 2020 @01:18PM (#60838176) Homepage Journal

    White House social media staff sometimes post using Trump's account, so they must have known the password too. Are they all that stupid, or are they too scared to tell him the password is stupid?

    • What makes you so sure that Trump was not told. Iâ(TM)m sure Trump is told a lot of things that he ignores or refuses to believe. Like I am sure he was told he could not use his outdated Android phone for secure communications. And I am sure he used it anyway for years.
      • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

        by Anonymous Coward

        What makes you so sure that Trump was not told. Iâ(TM)m sure Trump is told a lot of things that he ignores or refuses to believe. Like I am sure he was told he could not use his outdated Android phone for secure communications. And I am sure he used it anyway for years.

        He is the most stable genius in the history of intelligent design so who the hell are you to question his towering intellect?

    • Do you wanna end up at a gulag, err, "black site"?

    • They probably told him, "Your password needs to have a capital letter, numbers, and a special character."

    • by kenh ( 9056 )

      If the password was so stupid, why did only one person guess it? And by the way, since it had 2020 in it, I have to assume he at least changed his password annually. Leon Podesta (the head of Hillary's campaign) used gmail for everything and what was his password? Oh yeah, "password". That was the magic incantation that led to the DNC email hacks.

      Trump had upper and lowercase letters, numbers, and special characters in his password - that's what most experts recommend, isn't it?

      • by hey! ( 33014 )

        We don't know that only one person guessed it. But since one person guessed it and reported it, we didn't see any last minute shenanigans on November 2.

  • Most people, especially the Democrats, seem to be laughing at the gullibility, incompetence and the sheer rank unmatched stupidity of the Trump followers, filing 51 law suits....

    The Trump slate of electors in the states he lost have the same legal standing of a parliament of crows. But still, with serious demeanor they cast their vote for Trump, on camera. And they hold for a "Public Hearing in the Pennsylvania State Senate about election irregularities". The venue is not Senate Chamber, Capitol, Harrisbu

    • by kenh ( 9056 )

      Shut up - he took his complaints to court, how does that end democracy? He exercised his right to file cases in court, period. Stop with the Chris Hayes/Rachel Maddie dramatics - he filed a lawsuit and it was rejected, end of story.

      • by 140Mandak262Jamuna ( 970587 ) on Wednesday December 16, 2020 @06:35PM (#60839288) Journal
        What? Shut up? What the hell? Don't I have my first amendment rights? Only that idiot Trump has legal rights? We don't?

        They filed 51 law suits. Not one.

        The Texas law suit is so weak and ridiculous, it would not even get a hearing. But 66% of the house reps and 17 attorney generals signed on as amicus. Senators leaned on GA sec of state. Violent mobs are threatening violence against election officials. And Trump is egging them all on. And you are so nonchalantly dismissive of it?

        You too are hopelessly gone, punch drunk on the cool-aid.

  • Wouldn't surprise me if it hasn't been updated.

  • by suso ( 153703 ) * on Wednesday December 16, 2020 @07:39PM (#60839468) Journal

    IMPO, Twitter's security is a bit better than this guy is claiming. Also, it's far easier to just fake a website and screenshot using the browser's developers tools. I could do that in 10 minutes. It would be a more creditable claim if he showed his DMs or actually posted something after saying what he would post out of band. Yet the article makes claims that would be possible in theory when if he really had access there is no theory about it, he could have just done it. Shame on people for just accepting a screenshot at face value, you've been duped.

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