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20:24 July 15th, 2009

Twitter co-founder Biz Stone’s expected underwear

Posted by: David Lawsky
Tags: Mediafile, , , , , , ,

Even at a difficult moment, Twitter co-founder Biz Stone managed to be witty.

It fell to Stone to write about the hacker who broke in to the company’s computers and stole sensitive business information. His blog on the matter — the official statement from Twitter — was dubbed “Twitter, even more open than we wanted.”

Someone sent a trove of the Twitter documents to the Silicon Valley website TechCrunch. Stone’s blog clarified puzzling statements on TechCrunch that seemed to point toward Google Docs as the problem.  Said Stone: “This has nothing to do with any vulnerability in Google Apps which we continue to use.”

That must have come as a welcome relief at Google, which had been trying to explain the robustness of its security even as press agents for obscure security experts sent emails to suggest otherwise, so their clients would get a mention.

Stone said Twitter’s difficulties are an object lesson in the importance of having strong passwords. TechCrunch took some pleasure in asserting that the password for Twitter servers was the word “password.”

So, the public got its first titillating glance at privately held Twitter’s (out of date) cost and revenue numbers, which Stone likened to getting a look at the inside of someone’s underwear drawer, quoting someone else:

“No one’s really going to be surprised about what’s in there.”

TechCrunch, in negotiations with its lawyers and those of Twitter, has promised to put more underwear on display soon.

(Photo by Kimberly White/Reuters)

One comment so far

Is this ok? TechCrunch publishing stolen (hacked) information on their website. I don’t think it is, they should have warned Twitter about their security flaws, hacking into the system and publishing secret information is a step to far I think.

- Posted by Nikkei 225

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