Twitter passwords compromised following system glitch

Twitter has warned its users to update their passwords on the social media site following a system bug which has compromised users' passwords.

Usually when setting a password on Twitter, the entry is stored via technology which masks it so that it can't be seen by company staff.

Twitter's Chief Technology Officer Parag Agrawal explained the security breach occurred when a bug stored user passwords in an unmasked internal log which could be viewed by Twitter personnel.

"We mask passwords through a process called hashing using a function known as bcrypt, which replaces the actual password with a random set of numbers and letters that are stored in Twitter's system," said Agrawal.

"This allows our systems to validate your account credentials without revealing your password.

"Due to a bug, passwords were written to an internal log before completing the hashing process. We found this error ourselves, removed the passwords, and are implementing plans to prevent this bug from happening again."

Agrawal said an internal investigation at Twitter has shown no indication of a breach or misuse by anyone, however the company still urges users to err on the side of caution.

"We have no reason to believe password information ever left Twitter's systems or was misused by anyone," he said.

"Out of an abundance of caution, we ask that you consider changing your password on all services where you've used this password."

Users are encouraged to change their password on Twitter, in addition to any other service which uses the same password, and enable two factor authentication for added security.