Multiple Twitter accounts were recently hacked through Twitter’s own internal tools, affecting high-profiles like Apple, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, Barack Obama, and more. While the company is still investigating the issue, a new Bloomberg report claims that Twitter has been warned about potential account violations for years.
According to former Twitter employees, CEO Jack Dorsey and the board of directors have been warned of concerns about the security of users’ personal data since 2015.
The report says that there are about 1,500 employees who are directly related to internal account management, which gives them access to email addresses and phone numbers of millions of social network users.
While they can’t get direct access to these accounts, employees can easily use this personal data to snoop and even hack into Twitter accounts, a former employee told Bloomberg.
A group of workers used to create false support tickets to spy on celebrity accounts, including Beyoncé. With these support tickets, Twitter employees can check things like the IP address and the approximate location of the accounts.
Some of the Twitter contractors who were caught spying on celebrity accounts were employed by Cognizant Technology Solutions, but they have now been fired. However, Bloomberg sources say there are other employees who still snoop on those profiles.
In this recent attack in which 130 accounts were hacked, Twitter was able to confirm that the hackers got help from employees with access to an internal control panel.
A Twitter spokesman said the company has all the necessary tools to control who can access specific internal tasks, but that doesn’t seem to have stopped hackers from invading multiple accounts to share a cryptocurrency scam. The company is now under pressure from users to improve the security of its data.
However, former security employees claim that Twitter doesn’t prioritize security improvements internally.
Twitter management has often dragged its heels on upgrades to information security controls while prioritizing consumer products and features, a source of tension for many businesses.
The FBI is now investigating the recent attack and Twitter certainly has a lot to explain to the public about all these security breaches.
You can read the full story on Bloomberg’s website.
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