If you are one of the more than two million people who follow Donald Trump on Twitter, you might have seen an unusual tweet from the impossibly coiffed real estate mogul yesterday.
Rather than plugging his "The Apprentice" American TV show, or chirping up on a political issue, the multi-millionaire appeared to have chosen to quote a lyric by hip-hop artist Lil' Wayne.
These hoes think they classy, well that’s the class I’m skippen
It turns out that Donald Trump had, in reality, had his Twitter account hacked.
The offending tweet was swiftly erased, and "the Donald" - who doesn't believe in cover-ups - posted an explanation:
My Twitter has been seriously hacked--- and we are looking for the perpetrators.
Twitter will soon be irrelevant if lowlifes are so easily able to hack into accounts.
Of course, things could have been much worse. Imagine if Donald Trump's hijacked Twitter account had been exploited to post a link to a malicious website, for instance. With some clever social engineering ("Win free tickets for 'The Apprentice' grand final"?) you can easily picture many people clicking on a dangerous link and potentially infecting their computers with malare or having their passwords phished.
Quite how Trump's account was compromised is unclear, but a reasonable guess would be that he had either chosen a weak, easy-to-guess password, or that he was using the same password in multiple places. Never a good idea.
Multi-millionaire Trump stopped short of fellow celebrity Jeremy Clarkson, who vowed to kill the people who hacked his Twitter account earlier this week.
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Donald Trump image from Shutterstock.
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Well,Trump would certainly be one to know what a lowlife is.
"Grand final"? or "Grand finale"?
Um...seriously...who would WANT to hack the Donald's Twitter?
Someone obviously made a mistake as to the account they were hacking...I mean, the Donald makes himself look bad enough. What more could a hacker do? Make him look smarter?
The hackers probably had it easy. Only password I see him using is "trumppassword"
Either the world in general has crossed a threshold, or I have. I just caught myself yearning for simpler times...when an otherwise undefined mention of "the Donald" most likely was referring to a certain cantankerous half-naked (insecure) duck in a sailor suit.
As for the present-day "the Donald", one wonders what he doesn't already have that compels him to look for it on Twitter. (...speculation omitted by author)
In any case, it's not clear that the hackage of his account is entirely Twitter's fault. True...two-factor authentication probably would have helped, and apparently Twitter is working on implementing that. But in its absence, that simply places a greater burden of responsibility on Twitter users for creating more secure passwords. Including "the Donald".
> Twitter will soon be irrelevant if lowlifes are so easily able to
> hack into accounts.
The Donald will soon be irrelevant if he keeps giving away his twitter password to any lowlife who can social engineer him or guess his password reset question answers.
As @clydejberry cheekily remarked, "Oh, that explains the last two years."