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Vatican Twitter account thought to be hacked
Two recent Twitter incidents brought attention to the need for better social media security practices. Recently, a large broadcasting company based out of the U.K. was the victim of a cyberattack, reported The Associated Press. The Syrian Electronic Army claimed responsibility for hacking into the account and posting 10 different Tweets to the account's 59,600 followers before signing off. Similar attacks have been launched against other news organizations' Twitter accounts in the past.
More recently, the Twitter account of the Vatican's communications department was thought to have been hacked, reported USA Today. Last week, the office tweeted a link to a story with the headline "Holy Switcheroo: Batman has grown bitter, more vengeful with the years." Earlier that week, a senior Vatican official's Twitter account was hacked, raising concerns that the @pccs_va account had been compromised as well.
After investigating the tweets, Vatican officials determined that the Twitter account hadn't been hacked, but was caused by an "internal system failure" that led to a non-native English speaker posting the story on the website. The story, which was issued by the Catholic News Service, did run with the Batman-themed title and detailed the evolution of the Batman comic franchise.
Monsignor Paul Tighe, the second-in-command of the Vatican's social communications office, said that the Vatican regularly runs stories about a variety of issues and pulls from the Catholic News Service, although most news content is more religious in nature. When stories are posted, an automatic tweet goes out from the office's Twitter account.
"I thought we had been hacked to be honest," Tighe said about the tweet when he first saw it, according to USA Today.
The story was later moved further down so it was less prominent on the Vatican's communication website.
The Vatican and social media
Despite security issues, the Catholic Church has embraced social media in recent years. Pope Benedict XVI sent his first tweet on 12/12/12. While managing Pope Benedict's departure and searching for the new Pope, the Vatican used Twitter to communicate with its community, explained Search Engine Watch. It also used the site to announce when the new Pope had been chosen. Pope Francis' use of Twitter in recent weeks indicates that he will continue to use it to communicate with his 2.1 million followers.
With the increasing use of social media, especially with high-profile Twitter accounts like the Vatican's and the Pope's, it will be critical for communication and IT departments to carefully monitor security. Strong password protection and website security should be in place to prevent accounts from being hacked.
Recent attacks against major organizations have placed a premium on reliable authentication practices. Get your SSL certificate today so that visitors may navigate your site in confidence of its origin.
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