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SALT LAKE CITY -- Fueling the early BYU independence buzz online were several tweets posted by the Colorado State football Twitter account.
The CSUFootball account stated late Tuesday that BYU football was going independent and a press conference was scheduled for Thursday. Subsequent posts overnight suggested the press conference was with ESPN and BYU's 2011 football schedule would possibly include Notre Dame, Navy and Army.
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Source: BYU football going independent
Rumors about BYU football going independent were confirmed Wednesday. A source with Utah State University, familiar with the situation, told the Deseret News the move will be announced in the next day or two.A CSU athletics spokesman Wednesday morning acknowledged the account had been hacked, though he would only say the school was investigating.
Later, the media relations department issued this statement:
"At approximately 11 p.m. MDT last night, and again this morning around 5 a.m. MDT, the Colorado State football Twitter feed was deliberately compromised by an anonymous individual wishing to spread multiple rumors and attribute them to CSU.
"The tweets did not originate with anyone employed by the university. The tweets have been removed and the athletic department has changed passwords on all official athletics Twitter accounts.
"The Colorado State athletic department apologizes for any inconvenience this may have caused members of the media or fans following the football Twitter account."
An expert at H-11 Digital Forensics in Salt Lake City contacted by KSL Newsradio doubted a very high-tech hacking scheme was at hand.
"It could have been a phishing scam, [but] more likely it was more along the lines of social engineering -- they found out what the person's password was and they just logged in using that person's password," forensics technician Matt Anderson said. "That's talking to people -- no computers involved. That's just going in, meeting with them, saying hi. It could have been a friend. It could have been a colleague."
Anderson discounts phishing because usually those attacks have a broader focus.
Password generators are not just a tool employed in the movies. Anderson calls that "brute force attacking," and says he doubts it is method either. Usually, Anderson says passwords are difficult to change in those types of attacks.
Anderson says the hacker could have even simply guessed the CSU password if it was simple. He says the most common passwords are "password" and "secret."
"It just opens the eyes to what can happen," Anderson said. "Be careful."
E-mail: aadams@ksl.com
