More Than 1,000 People Could Access Twitter's "God Mode"


More Than 1,000 People Could Access Twitter's "God Mode"
by Tyler Durden Fri, 07/24/2020 - 12:25 Authored by Joshua Mapperson via CoinTelegraph.com,
The admin panel used by hackers to access over one hundred accounts can be used by over 1,000 twitter employees — two former Twitter employees revealed.
image courtesy of CoinTelegrpah
More than 1,000 Twitter employees and contractors had access to the internal admin panel that enabled last week’s Twitter hack of 130 high profile accounts.
According to Reuters on July 24, two former employees have shed light on just how vulnerable Twitter’s security was — and may still be. They said that, in addition to employees, contractors like Cognizant could also have access.
Former chief security officer at AT&T Edward Amoroso, told Reuters that such powerful controls should not be available to so many people.
“That sounds like there are too many people with access,” he said, adding that staff should have limited rights with responsibilities split up as well as multiple checks and balances in place for adjusting sensitive information.
“In order to do cyber security right, you can’t forget the boring stuff.”
What happened?
On July 15 attackers accessed Twitter’s admin panel allowing them to take control of any Twitter account, post tweets from them and access personal information including private messages.
They posted scam Bitcoin (BTC) ‘giveaways’, by promising to send back double any sum received. All told, the scammers got away with around 12 BTC.
High profile accounts taken over include Tesla founder Elon Musk, former United States President Barack Obama, Amazon owner Jeff Bezos, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates and 2020 U.S. presidential candidate and former Vice-President Joe Biden. Other celebrities, politicians and top business personalities also lost control of their accounts.
Twitter and the FBI are working together to investigate the breach, with regular updates from Twitter on their findings. On Jul 23, the company revealed that in “up to 36 of the 130 targeted accounts, the attackers accessed the DM inbox, including 1 elected official in the Netherlands.”
Twitter has also revealed they are looking for a new security head in order to improve security and employee training.
Security experts are concerned that the required upgrades to Twitter’s security and processes may not be complete before the U.S. elections on Nov. 3 with other countries potentially having the ability to manipulate the outcome through social media account take-overs.
Network security company Tenable founder Ron Gula asked:
“Does Twitter do enough to prevent account takeovers for our presidential candidates and news outlets when faced with sophisticated threats that leverage whole-of-nation approaches?”
https://www.zerohedge.com/technology/more-1000-people-could-access-twitters-god-mode

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

BMW traps alleged thief by remotely locking him in car

BMW traps alleged thief by remotely locking him in car Stealer's Wheel? Seattle police department quotes "Watchmen" movie in a recap of the recent arrest. Tech Culture by Gael Fashingbauer Cooper December 4, 2016 5:00 PM PST It's maybe the most satisfying arrest we can imagine. Seattle police caught an alleged car thief by enlisting the help of car maker BMW to both track and then remotely lock the luckless criminal in the very car he was trying to steal. Jonah Spangenthal-Lee, deputy director of communications for the Seattle Police Department, posted a witty summary of the event on the SPD's blog on Wednesday. Turns out if you're inside a stolen car, it's perhaps not the best time to take a nap. "A car thief awoke from a sound slumber Sunday morning (Nov. 27) to find he had been remotely locked inside a stolen BMW, just as Seattle police officers were bearing down on him," Spangenthal-Lee wrote. The suspect found a ke...
Read more

Report: World’s 1st remote brain surgery via 5G network performed in China

World’s 1st remote brain surgery via 5G network performed in China Published time: 17 Mar, 2019 13:12 ·           A Chinese surgeon has performed the world’s first remote brain surgery using 5G technology, with the patient 3,000km away from the operating doctor. Dr. Ling Zhipei remotely implanted a neurostimulator into his patient’s brain on Saturday, Chinese state-run media  reports . The surgeon manipulated the instruments in the Beijing-based PLAGH hospital from a clinic subsidiary on the southern Hainan island, located 3,000km away. The surgery is said to have lasted three hours and ended successfully. The patient, suffering from Parkinson’s disease, is said to be feeling well after the pioneering operation. The doctor used a computer connected to the next-generation 5G network developed by Chinese tech giant Huawei. The new device enabled a near real-time connection, according to Dr. Ling.  “You barely feel that th...
Read more

New ATM's: withdraw money with veins in your finger

New cash machines: withdraw money with veins in your finger Cash machine technology that reads the pattern of finger veins is already available in Japan and Poland   By Telegraph Reporters 6:59PM BST 15 May 2014 Cash machines could soon be installed with devices that identify customers by reading the veins in their fingers. The technology is already being rolled out in Poland, where 1,730 cash machines will this year be installed with readers, negating the need for a debit card and Pin. Developed by Hitachi, the Japanese electronics firm, the machines read the patterns of the veins just below the surface of the skin on your finger using infra-red sensors. The light is partially absorbed by haemoglobin in the veins to capture a unique finger vein pattern profile, which is matched to a profile. The technology is used by Japanese banks and also in Turkey, offering “groundbreaking levels of accuracy and speed of authentication”, Hitachi said, which in t...
Read more