Twitter working on its two-factor Authentication, says Wired

By Darshik Jariwala - April, 24th 2013

Twitter is reportedly working on two-factor authentication system. The rumor may hold considerable amount of truth to it owing to the recent incident where the Associated Press Twitter account was hacked.

The last few years have seen many reputed and famous companies fall prey to the hackers, which disrupted the company’s functions for hours and even days in some cases, along with the risk of the users (consumer’s) data being compromised. In a step to make the company, its data and its consumers data secure, many companies are now implementing two-factor authentication.

Some websites like Facebook and Gmail implemented it a while ago. The most recent companies to adopt it are Apple, who implemented two-factor security last month for its iCloud services followed by Microsoft, who implemented it about 2-3 weeks back for it for Microsoft accounts.

In case of Twitter, the hackers took over the Associated Press twitter account and posted a bogus tweet claiming two explosions at the White House and that President Obama was injured. However, this is not the first time that the hackers have targeted an influential twitter account; many famous personalities have been attacked in the past. In fact, it is quite weird that Twitter is yet to enable the two-factor authentication.

Two-Factor authentication works in a way where you are required to access a device, probably your mobile phone which receives a random code in a message sent by the website. You need to enter the code along with the password in order to confirm your identity. You have to register your phone number with the website following which you will receive the verification code in future as and when required.

According to Wired’s Mat Honan, Twitter is currently working on it, he says, “Twitter has a working two-step security solution undergoing internal testing before incrementally rolling it out to users, something it hopes to begin doing shortly, Wired has learned”.

Please do note that Twitter has not commented or given any official statement about the matter. But, considering the situation, it is safe assume that we might see that in coming days or weeks maybe.

Source : Wired

Photo Credit – Howard Lake/Flickr