Donald Trump Jr’s hacked Twitter account announces his father has died

Graham Cluley
Graham Cluley
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Donald Trump Jr's hacked Twitter account announces his father has passed away

Donald Trump Jr may not have just inherited his famous father’s name. He may also have inherited his bad password security.

The media is reporting that Donald J Trump Jr’s Twitter account (I refuse to call it “X”, as that’s an even dafter name that “Elon Musk’s Fun Palace”) posted a message claiming that his father, ex-president Donald J Trump, had died.

Djt tweet

The tweet, which has since been deleted, read:

“I’m sad to announce, my father Donald Trump has passed away. I will be running for president in 2024.”

A further series of tweets were posted by the prankster, including one which read “F*** Biden” – which, frankly, might well have been a genuine tweet by Donald Trump Jr.

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Obviously questions should be asked as to how this security breach could have happened. Was Donald J Trump Jr’s Twitter account protected with a strong, unique password? Did he have multi-factor authentication enabled? Was he phished? Had Trump Jr shared his password with anybody else (such as a social media intern who went spectacularly rogue).

For now, we don’t know the answers to these questions.

We do, however, know that the Trump dynasty has a history of choosing very poor passwords for its Twitter accounts. For instance, ex-president Trump himself was reported in the not-so-distant past to have been using passwords such as “yourefired” and “MAGA2020!”.

Sheesh.


Graham Cluley is an award-winning keynote speaker who has given presentations around the world about cybersecurity, hackers, and online privacy. A veteran of the computer security industry since the early 1990s, he wrote the first ever version of Dr Solomon's Anti-Virus Toolkit for Windows, makes regular media appearances, and is the co-host of the popular "The AI Fix" and "Smashing Security" podcasts. Follow him on Bluesky and Mastodon, or drop him an email.

One comment on “Donald Trump Jr’s hacked Twitter account announces his father has died”

  1. Chris

    Did Trump die, wow you went everywhere on that except weather he died or not?

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