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Twitter: Password is not enough.

After multiple attack waves, Twitter finally launched a secure identity verification.

The feature is based on two-steps authentication - password and code, similar to Facebook and Gmail's

security, so now Twitter's management hope to reduce accounts burglary rate.

Among the attacks, a widely publicized infiltration was executed last month by Syrian hackers against

the AP news agency’s Twitter account. Burglars fabricated reports about an allegedly White House

attack, which caused panic and extreme price declines on Wall Street. The community discussion

dragged on increasing exposure to information from social networks, its impact on securities trading

and the associated risks.

Today, there are more than 200 million Twitter account holders, individuals and businesses, advertising

around 400 million Tweets a day. Social network has become a popular destination for more and more

young people, the proportion of youth who have a Twitter account has increased from 12% in 2011 to

26% in 2012.

Following the AP account and a series of similar high-profile account hacks, Twitter released a new

Login authentication feature in two stages, similar to Google, Facebook and other online services, a

validation tool requires to enter a six-digit code received via SMS.

What do we expect next? Obviously hackers know about the SMS validation technique as there are

already multiple SMS spoofing services circling around the net, the two-stages feature is good and

provides some obstacle to hackers, but at the end if hackers would like to break into an account they

have a good chance to be able to do so.

With biometrics and other validation methods that require special devices, which are not as common as

cellular phones these days, maybe only during the next decade, accounts will continue to be under

attacks and our advice to users is to follow the service recommendations, choose strong secure

passwords and security questions, replace them every once and a while and check your accounts

frequently.

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