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A Dutch hacker has logged into the Twitter account of the President of the United States. Anyone studying Trump could have guessed the password.
Seemingly easy to hack: Donald Trump’s Twitter account
Keystone
Victor Gevers must have been sitting in front of his computer in amazement when he hit Enter and logged into the account. Last week, the Dutch hacker tried to guess the password of the world’s most powerful tweeter with a bit of trial and error. And it really did. The Dutch weekly Vrij published the incredible story on Wednesday together with the Volkskrant daily.
Therefore, Trump’s password was “maga2020!” According to Vrij, it took Gevers only six attempts to crack the password. According to the magazine, which also posted screenshots to show Trump’s account during the action, the hacker changed the password and background image of Trump’s Twitter profile, and also posted an obscure tweet on behalf of Trump.
What surprised Gevers the most was the fact that Trump had apparently disabled two-factor authentication (2FA) on his account, which provides additional security against hackers. In addition to their password, users must also identify themselves with a code sent by application or SMS. Twitter allegedly made 2FA mandatory for VIP accounts. It is not clear why this security barrier was disabled for Trump. Vrij Nederland speculates that the 2FA may have been disabled when Trump was hospitalized so he could easily tweet at the hospital.
Trump passwords: “maga2020 !!” and “you were fired”
After the hack, Gevers tried to make Donald Trump aware of the possible security breach, a practice that is common among hackers when they discover open security breaches. According to the newspaper report, the United States Secret Service contacted him a few days later and thanked him for the lead. In fact, the story could end with that. But a few days ago Trump scoffed in front of an audience: “Nobody gets hacked. To get hacked, you need someone with an IQ of 197 and must know 15 percent of your password. That never happens. “
Due to this public ignorance, Gevers decided to go public with the story to draw attention to the danger of being hacked. Gevers told the magazine: “All I want is for people to know that two-factor authentication should be mandatory. Passwords are the Achilles heel of the Internet. “
Trump’s statement is also interesting because Gevers and two friends had already hacked Trump’s account in 2016. The three friends had copied the password from a hacked LinkedIn database accessible on the Internet, apparently Trump used it on various platforms and not changed it. That was easy to guess too. It was “you’re fired,” “you’re fired,” a phrase that Trump, as host of the television show “The Apprentice,” had gladly repeated.
