Russell Crowe’s tweet embarrasses a million fans

Russell Crowe, the Australian actor best known for his role as Roman general Maximus Decimus Meridius in the epic film the Gladiator gave his one million fans a rude shock when a sultry picture of a women’s pubic area appeared in his twitter feed. His public relation team claimed that his twitter account was hacked into, and Crowe himself denied any knowledge of the pubic tweet.

Posting a nude picture would perhaps be the silliest action by any hacker, and therefore seems improbable. Typically hackers tweet spam links or broadcast their achievement once a celebrity account is compromised.  A good example is the very real hack of the vivacious Lady Gaga’s twitter and Facebook accounts, to tweet/post a fake survey link masked as an attractive free ipad giveaway gimmick.

Whatever the truth may be; we must ensure that no one get holds of our unattended phone and tweets onto our twitter feed. Technically, you are hacked but by someone known; naughty children, colleagues or an estranged partner for example. Password protecting your phone is a useful defense.

Another intriguing but largely improbable theory, based on the recent Chinese incident of a technician accidentally broadcasting a porn film on public LED screen, is of a PR manager accidently tweeting on a client’s account, while viewing pictures on his device.

Tweet happy fingers is a strict no no; but that advice happens to be good old commonsense not cyber security.

photo credit: id-iom via photopin cc