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TECHNOLOGY Saturday 18 July 2020
Experts say Twitter breach troubling, undermines trust

By ZEN SOO materialized, Wyden said
AP Technology Writer Thursday, leaving every-
HONG KONG (AP) — A one's private messages
breach in Twitter's secu- "vulnerable to employees
rity that allowed hackers who abuse their internal
to break into the accounts access to the company's
of leaders and technology systems, and hackers who
moguls is one of the worst gain unauthorized access."
attacks in recent years and "This is a vulnerability that
may shake trust in a plat- has lasted for far too long,
form politicians and CEOs and one that is not present
use to communicate with in other, competing plat-
the public, experts said forms," Wyden said in an
Thursday. emailed statement.
The FBI said Thursday it is "If hackers gained access
investigating the hacks, to users' DMs, this breach
and said the high-profile could have a breathtak-
accounts "appear to have ing impact, for years to
been compromised in or- come."q
der to perpetuate crypto-
currency fraud."
The ruse discovered
Wednesday included bo-
gus tweets from former
President Barack Obama, This April 3, 2013, file photo shows bitcoin tokens in Sandy, Utah.
Democratic presidential Associated Press
front-runner Joe Biden,
Mike Bloomberg and a ing director of cybersecu- were tricked, that's actu- er activities and reducing
number of tech billionaires rity firm Network Box. ally a serious cybersecu- the number of people who
including Amazon CEO Reacting to the breach, rity problem in itself," he have access to sensitive
Jeff Bezos, Microsoft co- Twitter swiftly deleted the said. "How can one of the data, Tobac said.
founder Bill Gates and Tesla tweets and locked down world's most used social This week's case follows last
CEO Elon Musk. Celebrities the accounts to investi- media platforms have such year's federal investigation
Kanye West and his wife, gate. In the process it pre- weak security, from a hu- of two former Twitter em-
Kim Kardashian West, were vented verified users from man perspective?" ployees charged with spy-
also hacked. sending out tweets for sev- Rachel Tobac, CEO of So- ing on users for the Saudi
Twitter said the hackers eral hours. cialproof Security, said that government.
used "social engineering" The company said Thurs- the breach appeared to Several U.S. lawmakers
to target some of the com- day it has taken "significant be largely financially moti- called on Twitter to coop-
pany's employees and steps to limit access to in- vated. But such an attack erate with authorities in-
then gained access to the ternal systems and tools." could cause more serious cluding the Department of
accounts. The term refers User passwords did not ap- consequences. Justice and the FBI to se-
to taking advantage of hu- pear to have been com- "Can you imagine if they cure the site after the latest
man nature via phishing at- promised, Twitter said, so had taken over a world breach.
tacks, tricking people into it's not necessary for users leader's account, and "I am concerned that this
downloading malicious to reset them. tweeted out a threat of vio- event may represent not
software or compromising Many celebrities, politi- lence to another country's merely a coordinated set
them by offering something cians and business lead- leader?" asked Tobac, a of separate hacking inci-
in return for information. ers often use Twitter as a social engineering hacker dents but rather a success-
Twitter did not say how its public platform to make who specializes in provid- ful attack on the security of
employees were compro- statements. U.S. President ing training for companies Twitter itself," said Sen. Josh
mised. Donald Trump, for exam- to protect themselves from Hawley, a Missouri Republi-
The attackers sent out ple, regularly uses Twitter such breaches. can.
tweets from the accounts to post about national and Tobac said companies can He added that millions of
of the public figures, offer- geopolitical matters, and guard themselves against users relied on Twitter not
ing to send $2,000 for every his account is closely fol- such attacks by beefing just to send tweets but also
$1,000 sent to an anony- lowed by media, analysts up multi-factor authentica- communicate privately via
mous Bitcoin address. and governments around tion -– where users have to direct messaging. Twitter
Cybersecurity experts say the world. present multiple pieces of hasn't said if hackers were
such a breach could have The White House said Thurs- evidence as authentica- able to access the private
dire consequences since day his account was secure tion before being allowed messages of their high-pro-
the attackers were tweet- and wasn't jeopardized by to log into a system. file targets.
ing from verified, globally the hacks. Such a process could in- Oregon Democratic Sen.
influential accounts with Twitter faces an uphill bat- clude having a physical to- Ron Wyden said Twitter
millions of followers. tle in regaining people's ken that an employee must CEO Jack Dorsey told him
"If you receive a tweet from confidence, Gazeley said. have with them, on top of in a private conversation
a verified account, belong- For a start, it needs to fig- a password, before they in 2018 that the company
ing to a well-known and ure out exactly which ac- can log into a corporate or was working on protecting
therefore trusted person, counts were hacked and other private system. direct messages, known as
you can no longer assume show the vulnerabilities Other methods include in- DMs, with end-to-end en-
it's really from them," said have been fixed, he said. stalling technical tools to cryption.
Michael Gazeley, manag- "If key employees at Twitter monitor for suspicious insid- But that promise never