It should have been a great night for Laremy Tunsil, the offensive lineman from Ole Miss. He was drafted #13 by the Miami Dolphins in the 2016 NFL Draft.
Unfortunately, his Twitter and Instagram accounts where “hacked”. Looks to me like somebody got access to his iPhone. Three possible lessons from an information security perspective:
- Make sure you have a passcode or biometric security on your phone. Nobody should know your code; not your best friend, not your girlfriend, not your kids, maybe your spouse.
- Strong, unique passwords and two factor authentication can prevent somebody who discovers one password (like Twitter), from logging into other accounts (like Instagram). Of course this doesn’t matter if a mean person has your unlocked phone.
- Never post anything to social media unless you’d be happy to see it on the front page of the NY Daily News.
There are lots of other lessons to be gleaned from this incident. I’ll leave that to the sports writers. However, I hope the media shines a spotlight on the system and not just a kid who accidentally disclosed the realities of high stakes college athletics.