Twitter’s Massive Hack 2020 : Reminder on Social Media Security Tips
One of the biggest twitter hack happened last Wednesday in which several large Twitter accounts belonging to the billionaire Bill Gates, former US President Barack Obama, Tesla boss Elon Must, Apple, Joe Biden among other were hacked. Similar tweets soliciting donations via cryptocurrency Bitcoin were sent from hacked accounts.
PVV leader Geert Wilders’ Twitter account was also hacked, although it is not clear whether the people behind this hack belongs to the same group or not. Wilders’ profile picture was replaced with a caricature of a black man and his account has been retweeting conspiracy theories. So far no money has been asked for on his page.
In addition to that, accounts from multiple companies sent tweets that were not originally from the company itself. For example, the account of Apple and Uber has been asked to transfer bitcoins. If people would transfer 1000 dollars bitcoins in half an hour, they would receive $ 2,000 in exchange. “Giving back to the community,” was the headline.
According to Twitter, the hackers gained access to Twitter employees who have access to the platform’s internal systems. Through that they got access to the verified accounts and hijacked them. Once Twitter became aware of the hack, it immediately locked down affected verified accounts and removed the tweets posted by the attackers. As a precaution, Twitter also limited the functionality of all verified accounts. “This was disruptive, but it was an important step to reduce risk. Access will be restored to original account holders only when we are certain we can do so securely.”
In a tweet on Wednesday, CEO Jack Dorsey said « it was a tough day for us at Twitter. We all feel terrible this happened. We’re diagnosing and will share everything we can when we have a more complete understanding of exactly what happened.”
It brings us to think how we can stay untouched if hackers can get access to the verified accounts. Just imagine if hackers would also have access on everyone’s DMs how much personal information that they shared via private messages would also have been leaked.
So, whether you use your social media account to stay in touch with family/friends or for business purpose, such as brand awareness, grow a large audience, increase your website traffic, generate more leads, connect with your audience in a better way, make more sales and more money, social media may become a critical part of your everyday life. With nearly half of the world’s population using social media platforms, they’re a natural place to reach new and highly targeted potential customers. According to Global social media research summary 2020, social media users are now spending an average of 2 hours and 24 minutes per day multinetworking across an average of 8 social networks and messaging apps.
In today’s tech-savvy world, every business is showcasing what they’ve got and make the most of it on social medias. But unless they don’t optimally utilize the online security tools, they are going to be vulnerable to social media security risks like hacking and phishing attacks. Twitter has a large security department and they takes security very seriously, but even with proper training, a hack via social engineering can hardly be prevented. So here below are few reminder safeties tips to deal with social media security issues:
- Use auto-updates to get the latest versions for apps, software and operating systems.
- Don’t ignore the 2 factor authentification. It is much more difficult to hack your account if you’re using two-factor authentication on it.
- Change your password frequently. Opt for a strong password instead of using your date of birth, your nick name, your favorite dessert or your pet name.
- Use unique password for each social media account. Using same password for your twitter/Facebook LinkedIn or other social tools can be dangerous.
- If you receive any specious link from your followers via email or inbox, don’t just ignore / delete it but always report and spam those accounts.
- Run a monthly check to verify and block fake accounts as platforms like Facebook and Instagram are full of fake profiles. Those fake accounts can be a hacker, a suspicious organization who wants to monitor your activities.
- Make a habit of checking your inbox and reading mails received from social media accounts. Many people often ignore those emails, but it might be a notification to alert you about a login attempt by a hacker.
- Be aware before giving access to any third part apps. It should be clear that before you give an app access to an account, it’s important to understand the permissions it requests and what it does with the data it can access.
- Create an informed social media policy for your staff against security risks and legal issues. Obviously, your team members will be careful with company information online but it’s important to remain vigilant and watch out for phishing and other social engineering attacks.
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