Celebs risk 'reputational damage' with weak passwords

Celebrities risk having their reputation damaged or destroyed by failing to protect their online accounts with strong passwords, IT risk specialist Imperva warned this week.

The warning follows reports of Britney Spears’ TwitPic account being hacked, with the hacker leaving false reports of her death.

“What the complex online events leading up to the incorrect reports of the celebrity deaths spreading around the Web show us [...] is the sheer power of the Internet in terms of potential reputational damage,” said Rob Rachwald, Imperva’s director of marketing.

According to Imperva, TwitPic is currently hackable in “a matter of hours” because accounts are only protected with four digit numeric passwords.

TwitPic is a third party Twitter application used by Twitter members to share photos and cartoons.

Imperva said companies that let their employees use social networking sites should install web application firewalls to offer users better protection, as well as ensuring that employees choose strong passwords.

“The key issue here is that companies need to install additional security technology at the same time as when they deploy these new Web 2.0-based services in their organisation,” Rachwald said.

“This is because Web application firewalls and other protective Internet security systems are becoming more and more important, as they can compensate for internal security control issues.”

IT security firm Sophos agreed with Imperva’s analysis, and warned users to beware of malicious links published on Twitter.

“This kind of vulnerability goes to show how simple it can be for hackers to break into accounts, which could then be used to expose followers to malicious web links containing malware or phishing pages,” said Graham Cluley, Sophos spokesperson.

“Although users should continue to be very careful when clicking on links in tweets, especially ones that have been obfuscated by link shortening services, this attack has demonstrated that services like TwitPic need to be doing more to protect their users,” Cluely said.