Outgoing president Donald J. Trump may not be on Twitter for much longer. The social media giant has said that as soon as he’s no longer commander-in-chief, he’ll be subject to the same rules as everyone else — and the only reason Trump, who’s violated just about all of them, hasn’t been booted is because he’s the President of the United States. But not only is he infamously bad with keeping state secrets, he’s apparently also terrible with keeping his social media accounts on lockdown. As per Vox, Dutch prosecutors confirmed that his Twitter account was hacked, in part because his password was comically easy to guess.
Word of the hack first cropped up back in October, when hacker Victor Gevers claimed he’d gained accessed the world’s most notorious Twitter account, not through some byzantine hacker method. He simply guessed the right password. And that password was — drum roll — “maga2020!”
At the time, the White House denied Trump’s account had ever been accessed. But on Wednesday, prosecutors in the Netherlands confirmed Gevers’ claim was accurate. What’s more they argued Gevers had acted in an “ethical” manner, immediately turning himself into authorities after gaining access. He even had a good reason:
Gevers said he was looking for vulnerabilities in high-profile social media accounts ahead of the US presidential election, just in case they got hacked by someone with malicious intent. That’s a good thing, especially since Trump apparently didn’t have two-factor authentication activated on his phone, which would have added an extra security step besides a password. Luckily, Gevers found a problem before someone else did. “The hacker released the login himself,” Dutch police said about Gevers’s actions two month ago.
So there you go: The President of the United States has never bothered to take the simple step of activating two-factor notification on his phone, despite being the President of the United States. Meanwhile, Gevers won’t face any charges. Hopefully the incident caused Trump to try a more secure password. But he probably just went with something about rigged elections.
(Via Vox)