So Twitter was hacked today. As of this evening there has been no group or individual identified with the coordinated attack, however, numerous prominent accounts were compromised. These accounts were then used to urge users to deposit money into a Bitcoin account. At last tally about $118K in Bitcoin was deposited.
Twitter is being very tight-lipped as to what happened with the service. As I navigated the site on and off today I noticed that it was often unresponsive. Once word broke that accounts were being compromised I found myself unable to tweet. I figured because it was I had tweeted the “Fail Whale” graphic from the early days of Twitter over and over again. I’m a smart ass like that.
After being locked out of the service I’ve checked in a couple of times but haven’t tried to tweet. News services are talking about the global crisis this created; apparently people are relying on tweets from the National Weather Service to be notified of things like Tornado Warnings.
Sorry, but I find that rather idiotic.
Important events, alerts, and the like should be sent via more traditional means instead of by tweet. I know the City of Chicago likes to send messages to every cell phone, much like a notification from the Emergency Alert System. Having events like a tornado warning dependent on a social media site is just foolish, especially a service that is privately owned and not regulated in anyway.
Tweet about that.
