Nobody Gets Hacked, Trump Says, Forgetting His Twitter Account Got Hacked

A video of President Trump addressing an October 19 campaign rally and saying, “nobody gets hacked” has gone viral, as reported by Kate O’Flaherty. This is not surprising, given the actual video clip goes on to claim that hackers have an IQ of 197 and need “about 15% of your password” to succeed.

It seems that this particular line of thought was sparked by C-SPAN political editor Steve Scully admitting to lying about his own Twitter account being hacked.

The ridiculousness of the comments aside, the Trump video clip immediately reminded me of a story I reported earlier this year: Can You Guess Trump’s Twitter Password?

MORE FROM FORBESCan You Guess Trump’s Twitter Password? These Hackers Say They Cracked It In 2016: ReportBy Davey Winder

Back in 2016, a trio of Dutch hackers managed, they say, to crack Trump’s Twitter password. Forget only needing the “about 15% of your password,” as Trump said in that campaign address on Monday; it’s much easier if you look for reused passwords from earlier breaches that have not been changed on those other accounts.

The ethical hackers in question said that it took less than a second to extract Trump’s password from a 2012 LinkedIn data breach database.

That password being, in case anyone is tempted to turn to Trump for cybersecurity advice, yourefired.

Yep, not only just ten characters and all the same case alphabetical ones but his well-known catchphrase from The Apprentice TV show.

Really, people, don’t do that as it’s just inviting trouble. Trouble such as your Twitter account getting hacked.

After all, on February 21, 2013, Trump’s own @realDonaldTrump Twitter account tweeted, “My Twitter has been seriously hacked.”

Yes, seriously.

Hacked.

The hack in question was the posting of a lyric from Lil’ Wayne’s verse in the Will.I.Am song, “Scream and Shout.” I’m not for one moment suggesting that Trump himself randomly posted some Lil’ Wayne lyrics to his official Twitter feed, that would be just plain stupid, right?

Just as stupid as claiming nobody gets hacked.

Beyond Twitter, Trump’s hotel chain was hacked not once but twice, according to a TechCrunch report.

The takeaway here is to get your cybersecurity advice from experts rather than politicians or presidents. This means not only using better passwords than yourefired, or ‘Person Woman Man Camera TV‘ for that matter, and using two-factor authentication wherever possible.

I have reached out to the Trump campaign for comment and will update this article should any be forthcoming.