Twitter's Security Woes and Meltdowns

Over the past few months Twitter has faced many security related problems ranging from hackers obtaining the login credentials of Twitter users, to malicious tweets linking users to web sites that spread malware. If the current security issues that plague Twitter are not resolved soon, then it will more than likely come back to haunt this company in the near future and possibly hinder it's growth.

How does Twitter reaffirm to its users that they provide a safe service when every other week a famous or well-known person's Twitter account gets hacked or private documents get posted repeatedly? Not only do accounts get hacked, but attackers use Twitter to spread malware infections such as the recent Koobface worm.

The use of third party services that attempt to make the Twitter experience better have been used by attackers to gain access to famous Twitter user's accounts over the course of this year. The blame should not be on the third party services but Twitter itself.

Online sources, such as Mashable, have reported the speculation of several French sites obtaining images from Twitter's administration panel which were posted multiple times via the Twitter service. Images of the admin panel on Twitter would prove that outsiders, not from the Twitter company, have access to the inner workings of Twitter. This would show that the breakdown of Twitter's security is very severe. Even still, the images from personal accounts of Evan Williams, including Gmail, PayPal and Amazon, were supposedly compromised by the same French site. Until the images have been 100% confirmed, users of Twitter should not imply that the use of Twitter is a risk to other online accounts.

It has been suggested that Twitter abandons its current security policies and rebuild from the ground-up. Having said that, it is apparent, that Twitter as a service and company, is seriously flawed.