Twitter Urges All Users To Change Passwords After Glitch

Twitter Inc (TWTR.N) has urged its more than 330 million users to change their passwords after a glitch caused some to be stored in readable text on its internal computer system rather than disguised by a process known as “hashing”.

A blog post and series of Tweets on Thursday afternoon, the social network disclosed that it had resolved the problem and an internal investigation had found no indication passwords were stolen or misused by insiders.

“We fixed the bug and have no indication of a breach or misuse by anyone,” Chief Executive Jack Dorsey said in a Tweet. “As a precaution, consider changing your password on all services where you’ve used this password.”

The disclosure comes as lawmakers and regulators around the world scrutinize the way that companies store and secure consumer data, after a string of security incidents at Equifax Inc, Facebook Inc and Uber Technologies Inc.

According to NAN, Twitter discovered the bug a few weeks ago and has reported it to some regulators, said the person, who was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly.

The glitch was related to Twitter’s use of “hashing” and caused passwords to be written on an internal computer log before the scrambling process was completed, the blog said.

“We are very sorry this happened,” the Twitter blog said.