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

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

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

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.

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

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.

Found this article interesting? Follow Graham Cluley on Twitter or Mastodon to read more of the exclusive content we post.


Graham Cluley is a veteran of the cybersecurity industry, having worked for a number of security companies since the early 1990s when he wrote the first ever version of Dr Solomon’s Anti-Virus Toolkit for Windows. Now an independent analyst, he regularly makes media appearances and is an international public speaker on the topic of cybersecurity, hackers, and online privacy.
Follow him on Twitter, Mastodon, Bluesky, or drop him an email.

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