Not that crazy theories from my sister: Sean Spicer is either being hacked or mistakenly typing his password into tweets. pic.twitter.com/yULrRbeXOl
— Theodore Leo (@tedleo) January 26, 2017
A lot of Donald Trump’s policy positions—when he has them—are complete nonsense, but what his press secretary has been tweeting has been particularly odd. Sean Spicer’s official White House account has now sent out at least two now-deleted tweets full of random numbers and letters that kind of look like passwords, but … why?
The obvious answer is that Spicer, or perhaps someone else managing his account, has accidentally tweeted his password after already being logged in. As someone who’s typed his password into the user name box on various past occasions, it doesn’t seem too far-fetched, but it’s not the only possible explanation. It’s also not the only attention the Trump administration’s Twitter practices have garnered—Trump’s own, personal unhinged tweeting habits aside.
It was also discovered that Spicer’s Twitter account was tied to a gmail account, rather than an official White House account, though that was quickly rectified. After all, communications from an official press secretary account definitely constitute official business, which should be handled on government accounts. So was Donald Trump’s POTUS account, but it has also been changed:
Presidential infosec, post-DNC hack
—@POTUS uses private email
—”old, unsecured” Android phone
—@POTUS has no 2FA
—Spicer tweets password 2x pic.twitter.com/sdOvLKrWLu— Thomas Rid (@RidT) January 26, 2017
That also leaves aside the issue of Trump’s personal account, which he still uses to communicate with the public and is apparently still being run from his unsecured Android phone.
Anyway, a possible alternate explanation was pointed out: He may be using a service that allows tweeting by SMS message, and he accidentally tweeted these messages instead of texting them to their intended recipients. Although … that’s just a roundabout way of him still tweeting out passwords. No doubt, they’ve been studying in the Rudy Giuliani school of cyber security.
All this after we learned yesterday that certain Trump officials are at least partially using unofficial RNC email addresses. None of these are particularly Earth shattering stories, as a GOP official pointed out to us, but that’s the way stories on cyber security have seemed to go lately. Those who live in glass email witch hunts … wait, I think I got that metaphor backwards. You get it.
(via Twitter/Tech Crunch, image via Defence Images)
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