Trump: Twitter account hacked? There are doubts about that too!

Trump's Twitter account was allegedly hacked. But one can also certainly doubt it. We explain why!

Exactly a week ago we reported that US President Donald Trump fell for a satirical article. This tweet now appears in a new light because it could have come from a hacker who allegedly gained access to Trump's Twitter account.

The bizarre tweet

On October 16, Trump tweeted that Twitter was shutting down the entire network to prevent negative news about his election opponent Joe Biden.
As proof, the tweet contains a link - to a satirical site, which is also pointed out countless times under the tweet.

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1317044556328730625

Now the big question was whether Trump was making a joke (rather unusual for him), whether he was actually falling for satire - or whether there was something else behind it.

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The history

A few days later, a statement from Trump about hackers went viral that made both experts and “script kiddies” smile:

“Nobody gets hacked. To get hacked, you need someone with an IQ of 197 and they need about 15 percent of your password.”

supposed to lead the unusual TV duel between Trump and Biden . However, Scully previously mocked Trump in a tweet, after which he was suspended . Scully then claimed that his Twitter account had been hacked, to which Trump commented with the above words.

Scully later admitted to lying that he had written the tweet out of frustration over excessive criticism of him.

The alleged hack

On October 22, the Dutch site Vrij Nederland that Dutch ethical hacker Victor Gevers was able to gain access to Trump's Twitter account on October 16 by simply guessing.

His sixth attempt is said to have been successful: the password is said to be maga2020! been.

This looks very convincing, but only at first glance.

Doubts about the hack

A small detail in the screenshot is disturbing: the bio.

Both now and before the alleged hack on October 16th, a US flag can be seen 45th President of the United States of America

However, in the above screenshot of the alleged hack, the flag is missing, which suggests two things: Either the special flag symbol is not visible for some reason or it is a screenshot of a recreated account that is supposed to make the hack credible.

There's also something wrong with the number of characters in the screenshot.
If the flag is actually missing in the screenshot (which it shouldn't be), the number of 46 characters is correct:

However, there should be a US flag, as we described above.
Even if the US flag is not visible in the editor for some reason, for example because the browser does not display special characters in the editor for some reason (which can be the case with the Safari browser), the character length should still be 50, not 46!

So Victor Gevers either deleted the flag in front of the screenshot and then added it again - or he recreated the screenshot with a different profile and forgot the flag.

Another detail stands out: the password.

Both the German and English security rules for Twitter advise you to create a password with a length of at least 10 characters.

On September 17th, Twitter announced that they were introducing proactive security measures for a certain group of high-profile, election-related Twitter accounts in the USA during the election period, for example for US congressmen, US governors and of course the US president are.

The next time those accounts logged in, they were asked to choose a stronger password if the old password did not meet the recommendations. Only then could the respective people use Twitter again.

The new password from September 27th should at least 10 characters long.
maga2020! but are only 9 characters.

Not directly related to the alleged hack, but important to know: The special protection of the account.

On November 2, 2017, something embarrassing happened: Donald Trump's Twitter account suddenly disappeared. A support employee deleted the account on his last day of work.

Since then, special security measures have applied to Trump's account, as was announced in July 2020 Twitter does not communicate exactly what measures are involved, but it is no longer possible for ordinary employees, for example, to administer the account directly.

This became known because numerous accounts of celebrities such as Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Elon Musk and Bill Gates were hacked in July, the accounts suddenly spread Bitcoin spam. However, Trump's account remained untouched.

It is not known what other security measures apply to his account, but one can assume that, for example, at least an IP check takes place, combined with a security check, as soon as the US President logs in from a new device.

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Conclusion

Ultimately there are two possible scenarios

1. Trump's account was hacked on October 16, the hacker sent the tweet with the satirical link, but did not report on it until six days later
2. The screenshot was faked to attract attention

However, there are too many inconsistencies. For example, Trump deletes tweets if they only contain spelling errors ( see an overview of the deleted tweets here ), but of all things, he leaves a tweet that is not supposed to have come from him?

In addition, the inconsistencies with the character length in the bio and the password, which is actually too short and weak, as well as the special security precautions that have been in place for the US President's account for three years, suggest that there was not really a hack.

In the end, one could assume that Gevers was annoyed by Trump's statement about hackers and later claimed that he "hacked" the account by simply guessing.

Gevers himself leaves it open whether he sent the tweet with the satirical link or not:

“I'm not saying I did it. But what if I was the one who posted the tweet? Then Trump either has to admit that he never read the Babylon Bee article and posted that idiotic tweet, OR he has to admit that someone else posted the tweet.”

Article image: Shutterstock / By kovop58