Twitter Urging Users To Change Password After Internal Password Bug Discovered
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) – Twitter is urging all of its users to change their password after a "bug" was found in an internal log that stores passwords.
"When you set a password for your Twitter account, we use technology that masks it so no one at the company can see it. We recently identified a bug that stored passwords unmasked in an internal log," Twitter says.
According to the company, the bug has since been fixed and there's no indication of a breach.
We recently found a bug that stored passwords unmasked in an internal log. We fixed the bug and have no indication of a breach or misuse by anyone. As a precaution, consider changing your password on all services where you've used this password. https://t.co/RyEDvQOTaZ
— Twitter Support (@TwitterSupport) May 3, 2018
Out of an abundance of caution, users are being asked to change their password. You can change your Twitter password anytime by going to the password settings page.
"We mask passwords through a process called hashing using a function known as bcrypt, which replaces the actual password with a random set of numbers and letters that are stored in Twitter's system. This allows our systems to validate your account credentials without revealing your password. This is an industry standard," says the company. "Due to a bug, passwords were written to an internal log before completing the hashing process. We found this error ourselves, removed the passwords, and are implementing plans to prevent this bug from happening again."