Fri 18th of December, filed under Social Media
Twitter victim of hacking attempt
Twitter, the 140-character micro-blogging service, has been the victim of a hacking attack. According to reports, the site was infiltrated this morning by individuals claiming to be from the 'Iranian Cyber Army'.
The hackers redirected visitors from the Twitter homepage to a site with an image of the Iranian flag and the text, 'This site has been hacked by the Iranian Cyber Army'.
Sometime after the attack, Twitter reported that the hack had compromised the site's DNS records. A status update on the company's official Twitter feed read:
"Twitter's DNS records were temporarily compromised but have now been fixed. We will update with more information soon."
Attack "unacceptable"
Ben Parr, editor of social media site Mashable, said the incident would be highly embarrassing for the social media company.
"This is unacceptable for one of the world’s top 20 most visited websites. There needs to be accountability for this situation (no matter if it’s within Twitter or within a third party), and a more detailed explanation is warranted. Twitter also needs to find a way to assure that this never happens again."
Earlier this year, Twitter was the victim of a well-documented security breach when an anonymous individual hacked into the site, stealing a number of confidential documents, including office plans, business strategy and employee details. The site was also taken offline in August after further cyber attack.
Posted by Tom Mason
