Earlier in the day, Twitter requested all of its users, that’s roughly 336 million people, to change their passwords immediately. This is because a certain bug that exposed and stored all the passwords in plain text in an internal system. While their investigation showed no evidence that any of this information was compromised and that there was no breach, the company still recommended that users should change their password.
Typically, a company that has good security practices stores user passwords in a form that cannot be read. In Twitter‘s case, all the passwords are masked through a process called hashing. This process replaces the actual password with a random set of numbers and letters that are stored in the companies system.
Companies with good security practices typically store user passwords in a form that cannot be read. In Twitter’s case, passwords are masked through a process called hashing, which replaces the actual password with a random set of numbers and letters that are stored in the company’s system.
Twitter‘s chief technology officer, Parag Agarwal said;
We are very sorry this happened. We recognise and appreciate the trust you place in us,and are committed to earning that trust every day. Due to a bug, passwords were written to an internal log before completing the hashing process. We found this error ourselves, removed the passwords, and are implementing plans to prevent this bug from happening again.
This news just adds to the crumbling faith people have on social media platforms in regards to their personal information. Luckily for Twitter though, they nipped this one right in the bud! Let us know what you think about this situation in the comments below.
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