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Twitter’s Massive Breach Rings Cybersecurity Alarm Bells

A recent high-profile hack of Twitter has cybersecurity professionals and government officials raising concerns.

twitter 2430933 1280As Business Insider reports, Twitter experienced one of its worst-ever breaches earlier this month. The compromised accounts of prominent figures—including Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Bill Gates, Elon Musk, Kanye West and Kim Kardashian—were used for tweets that scammed people into sending bitcoin payments. The company lost $1.3 million in market capitalization in the next day’s premarket trading.

In all, hackers accessed 130 accounts and downloaded information from eight of them, Twitter has since disclosed. “We’re embarrassed, we’re disappointed, and more than anything, we're sorry,” the company said in a blog post. The hackers apparently walked away with more than $100,000.

“They’re in trouble,” San Jose State cybersecurity researcher Ahmed Banafa told San Francisco’s KGO-TV. “There’s no question about it. This is a big issue for them. This is a big deal."

The hack highlights the ongoing cybersecurity risk from companies’ own employees, as NBC News reports. Twitter pointed to “a coordinated social engineering attack by people who successfully targeted some of our employees with access to internal systems and tools.” Mikko Hyppönen, chief research officer at the Finnish cybersecurity firm F-Secure, told NBC News that humans remain the top cyber threat.

Torsten George, a marketing executive at cybersecurity firm Centrify, recommended to Forbes.com that organizations adopt the principle of zero standing privileges. That’s where employees typically have access to essential tools like email and the Internet, but must temporarily elevate their privilege level if they need more access. He further recommends that requests to raise someone’s privilege go through a formal process that leaves a digital trail.

Tom Patterson, chief trust officer of information-technology giant Unisys, tells Digital Journal that such vulnerabilities are particularly exposed with employees working from home during the coronavirus pandemic. He says that organizations sometimes grant remote employees too much access to ensure they don’t have too little.

Jose Ramos, senior principal consultant for cybersecurity risk consultant ACA Aponix, tells Compliance Week that the hack could presage worse to come. “Many attackers do this,” he said. “They make a lot of noise in one area, and then, they slip through the back door somewhere else.”

As CSO Online reports, the attack has also drawn scrutiny from lawmakers of both parties as well as federal investigators.

 

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