How did Twitter get hacked?
On July 15th many Twitter accounts were compromised. How did this happen to a company like Twitter?
‘This was the worst social media hack ever happened in history’
The security involvement of the hack are also wide-reaching, not just for Twitter but for other social platforms.
Early suggestions are the hackers managed to access administration privileges, which allowed them to bypass the passwords of any account they wanted.
Twitter appeared to confirm this in a tweet saying: “We detected what we believe to be a co-ordinated social-engineering attack by people who successfully targeted some of our employees with access to internal systems and tools.”
As we generate more content online we are creating a larger digital footprint. These attackers simply contacted Twitter and asked for the names of key personal, the head of the customer service, their CIO, etc. Once the attackers knew the identity of key individuals they then researched their web pages, Facebook links, LinkedIn profiles, etc.
The attackers were able to gain enough information from those pages to be able to correctly answer Twitter’s support questions and gain access to those accounts.
Once the attackers had access to an Admin account they could reset end-user accounts and then login as those users. It was that easy.
Some questions that should be asked; What would have helped prevent this disaster? Is your system(s) vulnerable to a similar attack? How can your system(s) be protected?
2FA or Two Factor Authentication would have stopped this attack. With 2FA the mobile device is registered to the account and the login is not possible until a code on the mobile device is entered.
At Protected Harbor we support 2FA for all systems, allowing our customers to be safe, secure, and protected, as in Protected Harbor.
