Hacker raises questions about passwords

SAN FRANCISCO, July 16 (UPI) -- A hacker who accessed a Twitter employee's personal e-mail in San Francisco highlights password security problems, a technical publication said Thursday.

The hack earlier this month took applications Twitter uses for sharing notes, speadsheets, ideas and financial details. The hacker sold the stolen information to news outlets and blogs and some of the content appeared online.

"We are in touch with our legal counsel about what this theft means for Twitter, the hacker, and anyone who accepts and subsequently shares or publishes these stolen documents," Biz Stone, co-founder of the San Francisco-based Twitter wrote in Tech News World.

Gaida Zirkelbach, an attorney with Gunster's technology practice said the First Amendment might not protect those who published the material. She told E-Commerce Times if the publishers knew the content was stolen, Twitter might be able to take action against them.

Dennis Hurst, a computer security expert, said one problem is people use the same password for more than one account, letting a hacker into an unsecured account from which he can reach a secure account.