January saw an 18 year old hacker get admin rights to twitter by running a dictionary attack against a known admin account. There was no password policy and no failed logon limit. A simple script left to run overnight was all that was needed to give the hacker access to obama's twitter account.

You can go to twitter today and do the same thing again.

The problem with introducing new security measures into existing applications, with users in the millions, is the repercussions.

The crux of whether existing social network applications can be secured is whether a business is willing to deal with these repercussions or deal with the consequences of being compromised – if it ever happens.