Potential Twitter Breach Exposed, Foreign Actors May Be Responsible
- by Gavin O'Malley @mp_gavin, December 17, 2018
When it comes to users’ private information, social networks increasingly look less secure than a sieve.
The latest issue involves Twitter users, a bug that potentially exposed the country code of their personal phone numbers, as well as whether their accounts had been locked by the social giant.
Twitter insists the breach did not expose users’ full phone numbers or any other personal data.
Although this might not seem like the most sensitive personal information, it could potentially be used to hone in on the whereabouts of users. Some may wish to keep such matters secret.
Twitter said it traced the potential breach to a problem with one of its support forms, which is used by account holders to contact the company about account issues.
The company began working to resolve the issue on November 15 and claims to have fixed it a day later.
Twitter locks accounts if and when they appear to be compromised or in violation of the company’s Rules or Terms of Service.
As with previous attacks on its platform, Twitter suspects that foreign actors might have been involved.
During its investigation, the company said it noticed unusual activity involving the affected customer support form API. Specifically, it observed a large number of inquiries coming from individual IP addresses located in China and Saudi Arabia.
Of course, Twitter isn’t the only social network struggling to keep users’ information secure.
Late last week, Facebook admitted it might have mistakenly overshared the photos of nearly 7 million users.
The problem stemmed from a photo API bug, which Facebook believed might have affected those who used Facebook Login, and then granted permission to third-party apps to access their personal pictures.