Twitter users urged to change passwords

MANILA, Philippines — Social media giant Twitter has advised its users to change their passwords following the discovery of an error that stored log-in information in its system. 

In an advisory sent to users yesterday, Twitter apologized over a recently identified bug that stored passwords in an internal log. 

It clarified that there was no indication of a breach or that the stored passwords were misused by anyone. 

However, Twitter asked users to consider changing their password on all services where it was used “out of an abundance of caution.”

“When you set a password for your Twitter account, we use technology that masks it so no one at the company can see it. We recently identified a bug that stored passwords unmasked in an internal log,” read the advisory. 

“We have fixed the bug, and our investigation shows no indication of breach or misuse by anyone,” it added. 

According to Twitter, they immediately removed the stored passwords following the discovery of the bug that affected the encrypting process.

“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,” explained the company. 

“This allows our systems to validate your account credentials without revealing your password. This is an industry standard,” it added.