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Twitter has given millions of users a way of making their accounts even harder to hack, with the introduction of support for physical keys.<\/p>\n
Most Twitter users protect their accounts in the traditional way: username and password. As with any other internet account, such security is vulnerable to a number of threats including phishing or a user unwisely choosing the same password that they use elsewhere on the internet.<\/p>\n
This is the primary reason that so many Twitter accounts have been compromised by hackers over the years.<\/p>\n
High profile victims have included FC Barcelona, CNN, Burger King, Google CEO Sundar Pichai, Wikipedia\u2019s Jimmy Wales, and Mark Zuckerberg.<\/p>\n
One of the most notorious hijackings of a Twitter account occurred in 2013, when the Syrian Electronic Army managed to gain control of Associated Press\u2019s Twitter account and posted a message saying that there had been an explosion at the White House and Barack Obama had been injured.<\/p>\n
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That bogus report knocked 61 billion dollars (briefly) off the Dow Jones Index.<\/p>\n
If you\u2019re sensible you have taken better steps than just a password to protect your Twitter account, and enabled two-step verification in the form of \u201cLogin Verification\u201d.That adds an extra hurdle to the login process by asking for a code generated by a third-party app such as Google Authenticator and Authy to be be entered.<\/p>\n
For most people, this level of protection is probably enough.<\/p>\n
But what if you want to go even further, and wish to ensure an even high level of physical security to your Twitter account?<\/p>\n
If that\u2019s you then you\u2019ll be interested to read news inside a blog post detailing Twitter\u2019s latest steps to combat spam and abuse on the site.<\/p>\n
Twitter has revealed that you can now use a physical USB security key which supports the universal two-factor (U2F) standard when signing in for login verification.<\/p>\n
The small keyfobs require the logging-in user to physically press a button to confirm the identity, and because it will only work on the real Twitter website it provides a high level of protection against phishing sites.<\/p>\n
Other websites which support FIDO U2F hardware keys \u2013 which are the same size and shape as a typical USB thumb drive \u2013 include Google, Facebook, Dropbox, GitHub, and SalesForce.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Twitter has given millions of users a way of making their accounts even harder to hack, with the introduction of support for physical keys. Most Twitter users protect their accounts in the traditional way: username and password. As with any other internet account, such security is vulnerable to a number of threats including phishing or … <\/p>\n