Twitter is urging users to change their passwords after discovering a bug in its system that left passwords exposed.
“We recently found a bug that stored passwords unmasked in an internal log. We fixed the bug and have no indication of a breach or misuse by anyone. As a precaution, consider changing your password on all services where you’ve used this password,” Twitter tweeted on Thursday.
In a blog post, Twitter explained that it “masks” passwords through a process called “hashing” that replaces the actual password with a random set of numbers and letters. These are then stored in Twitter’s system.
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The hashing process, which is widely used in the tech industry, lets Twitter validate users’ account credentials without revealing their passwords.
“Due to a bug, passwords were written to an internal log before completing the hashing process,” Twitter said, in a statement. “We found this error ourselves, removed the passwords, and are implementing plans to prevent this bug from happening again.”
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