Due to a bug discovered during an internal audit, social media company Twitter is recommending users change their passwords. An audit found that passwords were being stored in plaintext before an encryption process took place to secure the passwords on internal files. The company has fixed the bug, but is suggesting users change their passwords anyway.
“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,” a company official explained. “This allows our systems to validate your account credentials without revealing your password. This is an industry standard. 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,” he wrote.
