On August 30, the account of Jack Dorsey ( @Jack ), the famous Twitter CEO, was hacked and began spreading a series of racist tweets mentioning a group that was supposedly behind the gap.
Although this is not the first time this has happened, Jack had already been hacked by ‘OurMine’ in 2016, this time the social network has blamed the mobile phone provider indicating that Dorsey’s phone number was compromised.
The official Twitter communications account explained that the number that Jack had associated with his Twitter account was compromised due to a “carelessness” by the mobile operator, which allowed an unauthorized third party to write and send tweets through of the SMS function.
We’re temporarily turning off the ability to Tweet via SMS, or text message, to protect people’s accounts.
— Support (@Support) September 4, 2019
After several days since this incident, on Twitter they have decided to temporarily disable the function of sending tweets via SMS to “protect people’s accounts”. Twitter says it is making this decision due to the “vulnerabilities that must be addressed by mobile operators”.
In addition to this, Twitter will also be checking its dependence on the associated phone number to activate two-step authentication. They say they are working to improve that feature.
At the moment they say that they will soon be reactivating the function in markets where SMS is depended for reliable communication, meanwhile they will be working on a long-term solution.
