By Eric King-
A newspaper tweet was hacked to disparage Donald Trump, and it did so in the worst way.The Twitter feed of the Washington Examiner was hacked by a hacker who tweeted that Donald Trump was going to hell. The tweet read:
“Trump is going to hell. Anyone who ever read the bible can tell you where it stands on rich adulterers. The key to God’s forgiveness is repentance. Trump’s entire political career has been about the exact opposite of that. Also this paper is garbage for promoting ‘Trump and God’,” the tweet read.The message despised both the paper and president Trump, and was left undetected for nearly hours.
The hacker has not been identified, but the hacking is a reflection of just how vulnerable individual media accounts can be, let alone individual twitter accounts. Some have questioned why twitter did not detect the harmful tweet and delete it then close the twitter account it was sent from. The answer is that tweeter doesn’t yet have the technology to spot nuisance tweet on time and act to eradicate malicious tweets from dodgy twitter accounts.
A necessary progression for twitter might be for the social media giant to develop a system that enables them to spot malicious tweets pretty much instantly. The second best outcome would be for twitter to develop a software that at least detects nuisance tweets within half hour of its postage.
Thousands of Twitter accounts have been shut down over the weekend over automated messages discouraging people from voting. A majority of the accounts were posing as Democrats, twitter said. The author of the nuisance tweet could argue that he was simply expressing his opinion, but opinions like that are not consistent with twitters policies of ”healthy conversation” are not welcome on social media. The Washington Examiner will need to take responsibility for its security, otherwise a member of the paper could mischievously use the publication’s twitter account to send harmful messages.
Hacking is not an uncommon practice in this day and age. This publication has fallen prey to hackers in the past, but but the responsibility still lies with each organisation to have the highest level of security possible, and have it under regular review.