A few hours ago Facebook CEO, Mark Zuckerberg had several of his social media accounts hacked. That's Twitter, LinkedIn and Pinterest.
A hacker group, OurMine Team, said they did it. Their own account on Twitter was then suspended though I'm not sure that bothers them one way or the other.
The OurMine group said they had picked up Zuckerberg's password from a recent hack of LinkedIn in which thousands of passwords were exposed publicly. That's embarrassing because it could be possible that Zuckerberg is using the same password for multiple accounts -- a bad idea. It also means password laziness is still so rampant in the world that we're just as vulnerable as we ever were, no matter who it is.
The group says Zuckerberg's password was "dadada," which is highly unlikely. Mr Zuckerberg didn't found the biggest social network in the world by being that lazy.
On the other hand, the hackers may have just done Mark Zuckerberg a favour because his Facebook account certainly wasn't compromised. Neither was his Instagram account. Instagram, it will be remembered, belongs to Facebook.
Enough news comes out of Facebook specially regarding user privacy and tracking, and recently listening using the microphone on one's phone, that one would want to hack Zuckerberg's account to make a point. And so it isn't the first time he's been targeted, but it's nice to know that the public Facebook account is secure enough.
Those working on alternatives to passwords, which people have never quite made their peace with, should just hurry up and get them to the public.
BW Reporters
Mala Bhargava has been writing on technology well before the advent of internet in Indians and before CDs made their way into computers. Mala writes on technology, social media, startups and fitness. A trained psychologist, she claims that her understanding of psychology helps her understand the human side of technology.
