Social-Media
Lawmakers are demanding more details about Twitter 's massive hack
Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle are demanding more details about Twitter 's massive hacking attack yesterday. Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA) said in a statement Thursday that Twitter will thoroughly reveal what has happened and what it is doing to ensure that this never happens again.
Twitter accounts belonging to big corporations like Apple and Uber and high-profile personalities like Vice President Joe Biden, President Barack Obama, Elon Musk and Bill Gates have all been hacked as part of a orchestrated bitcoin fraud. According to Twitter, the accounts were hacked by hackers who "successfully attacked" staff who had links to the internal networks and software that had links to those accounts.
The specifics are still unidentified, but Twitter said late Wednesday night that they were still investigating the specifics of the assault.
But some politicians aren't ready to let Twitter set the tempo of the probe. Shortly after the assault started, Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) sent a letter to Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey asking if the organization plans to fix and avoid major breaches such as Wednesday's hacks.
I am worried that this occurrence could constitute not just a concerted series of separate hacking events, but a effective assault on Twitter's own defense, Hawley said in his letter Wednesday.
A successful attack on your system servers is a threat to privacy and data security for all your users.
A long-standing champion for cyber security, Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) called on Twitter to introduce encrypted instant messaging as a result.
Although it's still not obvious whether the hackers behind yesterday's event have obtained access to direct Twitter posts, this is a flaw that has lasted way too long and is not present on other rival sites, Wyden said in Thursday's speech. If hackers had access to users' DMs, this breach could have had a breathtaking impact for years to come.
