Twitter is a security threat
Actually, Twitter is a threat in many ways, in particular the spread of cancel culture and the increase in the ability to organize riots, as well as offering great rewards for animus in general.
But this is what I’m referring to in the title of this post:
On Wednesday, a spike of high profile accounts including those of Joe Biden, Elon Musk, Bill Gates, Barack Obama, Uber, and Apple tweeted cryptocurrency scams in an apparent hack.
“We used a rep that literally done all the work for us,” one of the sources told Motherboard. The second source added they paid the Twitter insider…
Whereas in other cases hackers have bribed workers to leverage tools over individual users, in this case the access has led to takeovers of some of the biggest accounts on the social media platform and tweeted bitcoin related scams in an effort to generate income…
Within an hour of the breach, Republican Sen. Josh Hawley wrote a letter to Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey asking for more information about the hack, including how the hack occurred, how many users were compromised, and whether the hack affected President Trump’s account. Hawley said “please reach out immediately to the Department of Justice and the Federal Bureau of Investigation and take any necessary measures to secure the site before this breach expands.”
In 2017, a Twitter worker briefly deleted President Donald Trump’s account before it was quickly reinstated…
All tech companies face the issue of malicious insiders.
How are employees of such companies vetted? I doubt there’s a way to stop this sort of thing; it’s baked into the cake, as it were. Most world leaders have accounts on Twitter, and the potential for mischief (too mild a word) of all kinds is enormous.
Most technical employees at Twitter, located in the United States, will be either on an H-1B or OPT visa, or entered the country that way. The technical workforce of Silicon Valley overall is 75 percent foreign born — probably higher among the junior employees. Many individuals are nice people, but numbers have a force of their own. Most of these employees feel no more loyalty to America, or Americans, than I would living in a large expat community in India or Hong Kong, for example. Though not quite ‘woke’, as in the sense of the American-born left, nor the equivalent in size, the fact that the actual development and operation of the very industry (software) now responsible for controlling most communication between Americans is in foreign hands is remarkable. And I might add conservatives have in the past, and many still do, dismiss concerns about this from American engineers as selfish protectionist pleading in the best light, and anti-hard-working immigrant in the worst light.
It has been apparent for some time that Twitter does not have effective management controls to ensure the employees operate according to company policies and not pursue their own agenda.
During the Obama presidency somebody hacked into the account of a news organisation, I believe it was AP, and issued a tweet that a bomb had gone off inside the White House. So this is not the first time and these hacks are still occurring. This is an organisational failure on part of Twitter, but then if they started working on security who would go around cancelling accounts and censoring tweets?
IMO, Twitter is something to avoid. Same goes for Facebook and the rest of the unsocial platforms. Or maybe I am an old fart fuddy duddy.
Twitter is the rejection of critical thinking.
I think the world would be better off without social media; particularly twitter. Whatever benefits it has (I’m sure it has some) seemed to be out weighed by the negative.
If the statement from the purported instigator is true; either an employee with appropriate access was paid to hack the accounts and send the tweets, or the employee allowed his or her sponsors access. If it’s the first case it is nearly impossible to prevent. Someone at Twitter has to have “god level” access to accounts. That’s how software is designed.
It would be like someone paying Don Lemon money to open his live news program with a faked news story. As with this situation at Twitter, Lemon’s producer and other folks on the set would fairly quickly realize the breach, and shut Lemon down, but he could get a message out.
Accounts are that only about $100,000 in BitCoin was sent the hackers’ way and they almost certainly would have to pay a Twitter employee more than that, much more than that. He or she will be found out and unemployable (at least in the U.S.).
Or there was some other motive beyond the money. Or the money was a maguffin to take focus away from their real purpose. As has been pointed out in news accounts, they could have been given access to scores of private tweets from and to famous people. This could be a treasure trove for blackmail purposes, or for political unrest.
Among other things, Twitter is a waste of time. You get self-image boosts by having “followers” and once that boost hits, more hits are necessary, no matter what has to be done to get them.
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I’m retired and I have enough time to comment here a couple of times a day, ditto on Facebook–political stuff mostly–and a couple of other places might or might not interest me.
And that’s about the motivation level, as well.
Really busy people (world leaders……?) finding time? If somebody were making progress by shooting out tweets as some say Trump does, okay. Other than that?
But what is out there is out there and by the time you’ve fired off a thousand tweets, one or more of them is going to be embarrassing. Or compromising. How can you blackmail somebody…unless the unpleasant behavior is discussed on his twitter account and who on earth would do that?
I don’t tweet.
Not getting it.
Social engineering has always been a security weak spot. ISTR a young lady who collected passwords in DC by courting the techs and wrote about it. And didn’t the NY Times have a reporter who slept with the head of security for the Senate Intelligence Committee? The problem with Twitter seems to be too many people with the power to manipulate accounts, likely a problem with all the social platforms. What is a public figure to do when newspapers universally suck?
Richard Aubrey,
I neither tweet nor facebook, and I agree 90% of twitter is a wasteland, but it has allowed for amazing live coverage from news events, as they happen, by folks on the scene. Think of what would have happened to the Hong Kong protesters if China knew they could control the images and message. Look at the unrest in our major cities last month. The MSM was trying to convince things were “mostly peaceful,” but brave, citizen journalists like Andy Ngo shared life footage from the scene and got the truth out.
It doesn’t have to be Twitter, many other software platforms can be a substitute, but I am glad everyday folks have a way around media distributors to get the message out.
well, although I’m generally in favor of smaller government, I will say that if social media cannot regulate itself then maybe government should regulate them.
Just as if a bank employee took money from my account without my permission would be criminal; then, deliberately altering or deleting someone’s social media account should also be criminal.
Such laws would, no doubt, stifle a lot of social media; but, it might also force them to clean up their act.
Chuck,
You are correct, and this hack was also an old school, give someone on the inside a bunch of cash operation.
I used to head up technology for a defense contractor. We took all necessary security precautions, but once, after another company had a breach, I was grilled in a Board meeting about whether we were doing enough. My reply; “If you want to get inside information about our company you could try to successfully cut into, repair and divert the fiber carrying our data (without being detected), then hope you could de-encrypt the traffic. Then hope you could figure out what the de-encrypted data means. Or you could park in the restaurant across the street with a microphone (hidden in a van) that picks up vibrations from this window in our board room and record everything we are saying. Or, you could find out what bar one of our engineers or salesmen hangs out at and have a pretty woman buy some drinks. What sounds easier to you?”
Anytime there are humans involved there is potential for a security breach. General Petraeus spilled his guts to a woman.
Having said all that, I’m still glad Senator Hawley is making them squirm.
Trump has 30 million followers on Twitter. I would say that IS a problem. Especially when he tweets some of the conspiracy theories he tweets. He too often chooses to do things like recently when he retweeted some theory that a game show host has about CV19 rather than actual scientific claims by doctors and people who are experts in the field. Why not find a doctor who is skeptical rather than a TV personality?
Reality has a very real way of ignoring partisan politics. And, indeed, it turns out that game show host [Chuck Woolery] just discovered his son has CV19. He just deleted his twitter account. Poor man. Trump won’t tweet that part though will he? Nope. Doesn’t fit the narrative.
But, hey, it’s a free country for people. And for the virus…
Take HCQ 🙂 That is the way the data is trending…
[Chuck Woolery] just discovered his son has CV19. He just deleted his twitter account. Poor man.
—————
Why? Is his kid immunocompromised or otherwise unhealthy?
It’s probably just another false positive test due to the tests being pumped out with super low specificity. Even if the kid has it, there’s a 99.9999% chance he’ll get through it with no issues, probably without symptoms.
It’s a cold. Not the plague.
just discovered his son has CV19
The virus formerly from Wuhan (formally SARS-CoV-2), or its progression as the disease ambiguously labeled Covid-19?
Take HCQ ?? That is the way the data is trending…
Planned Pathogen (PP) includes HCQ to limit its opportunity to enter and to facilitate transportation of Zinc, Zinc to reduce viability of its posterity, and AZ to control opportunistic pathogens. There are protocols established to safely disinfect before disease progression, but, like any drug, vaccine, etc., it is not a magical elixir, but it is well characterized and highly tolerable by the majority of the population.
Oh, and avoid Planned Parent (PP) establishments in Seattle, New York City, et al.
I am surprised at the amount of negative comments regarding Twitter. There is lot more to it than political discussion. I have never tweeted but it is a great way to keep up with kids, nephews and nieces and their team performances, although not much of that lately. Twitter is better than Facebook because it is based on the push-mode for delivery and one can just dedicate one browser to tweetdeck so there is no possibility of being followed around the internet via browser fingerprint.