Two-step authentication for Twitter accounts coming soon

The recent hacking of Associated Press’ Twitter account and the (luckily short-term) effect an explosive fake tweet had on the real-world has marked a turning point.

Both users and infosec pros are clamoring for the microblogging service to implement two-step authentication and, according to Wired, the moment is very close, as they already have a working solution that is in the last phases of internal testing.

As a reminder: back in February, Twitter posted a job listing saying that they were searching for a software engineer who would, among other things, be working on creating a multi-factor authentication solution for the service.

The massive breach of the company’s systems that was confirmed only a few days before was possibly what spurred them to action, but even at that time such an authentication option was long overdue.

As Wired pointed out, the problem with 2SA for Twitter is that – unlike for other services such as email, Facebook and other online accounts – a corporate Twitter account is often updated by several users who often use different devices and apps to access it. A quality 2SA solution will, therefore, have to offer support for all of them.