I had some doubts about veracity and while still in two minds but https://www.vn.nl/trump-twitter-hacked-again/ provides enough details that if it does turn out to be bs then they are easy enough to prove or refute - " After logging in, he emailed US-CERT". But I agree with your sense of hesitancy since the sources of the story mostly originate from Yahoo News, a Dutch marketing company called DPG Media, TechCrunch rather than the usual broader sources.
It will be interesting to see how Victor Gevers responds.
They can, but reading about Gevers shows a track record. It’s worth being skeptical, but keep his record in mind.
Apply the same skepticism to Twitter too, they haven’t got a great record.
This is the only screenshot that the researcher posts as 'evidence' of gaining access to Trump's account. I'm afraid that this one can be easily faked with browser tools. The fact that White house officials have extra security measures on their accounts it is this only screenshot that makes it less convincing that this is true, unless the researcher publishes multiple screenshots or video evidence of logging into the account themselves.
Otherwise it can be easily dismissed as a fake screenshot, even if he 'did it' in the past.
Which is trivial to fake by going to your own profile and using your browser's inspector to swap out a few images and change a few text boxes.
I kind of think it's a toss-up if this is true. I can believe Trump would use a very weak password and not apply 2fa, but I'm very surprised that Twitter's additional guard-rails for important accounts didn't prevent this.
The source article is linked to on the story, and it says screenshots were taken. My parsing interprets it as saying that they showed these screenshots to security researchers.
“screenshots were shared with de Volkskrant by the monthly opinion magazine Vrij Nederland. Dutch security experts find Gevers’ claim credible.”
Also, the guy has a history (well, both do). Gevers has got into numerous other accounts before, and uncovered some disturbing stuff - tracking of Chinese Muslims via facial recognition stuff in China for example.
If you follow the references they provide, you'll see that the person responsible is a respected security researcher with a history of similar discoveries. He also posted screenshots, and suggests that he was responsible for Trump's recent tweet praising a satirical Babylon Bee article.
Gevers comes up with a plan to make sure that this time the White House responds. He refuses to say what he did exactly, but in a tweet that has now been removed, he alludes to the fact that he was the one to post the Babylon Bee tweet in Trump’s name. Shortly after, he posted a tweet in his own name, tagging Trump and Team Trump, saying the Babylon Bee-tweet could now be removed, as it had served its purpose.
“I am not saying I did it. But what if I was the one to post the tweet? Then Trump will need to either admit to never having read the Babylon Bee article and posting this bullshit tweet, OR he will need to acknowledge that someone else posted the tweet.”
Breaking into a Twitter account to prove it is poorly secured is one thing, posting a tweet is another. “I took things further this time because our previous report obviously didn’t have any effect”, says Gevers. “I hope that everything will now be resolved soon, and that mister Trump sends us a message. ‘Thank you for your work/report.’ That should suffice and will round up things for both cases.”
Two economists were walking down the street. The first one says: “Isn’t that a $20 bill?” The second one says: “Can’t be. If it were, somebody would have picked it up already.”
I mean who knows how many intelligence agencies are reading his DM's. If I knew Trumps password I wouldn't do anything that would make it clear that I knew it.
