Twitter has revealed that hackers viewed private direct messages (DMs) from 36 of the accounts involved in last week’s hack. It has not disclosed who they belonged to beyond saying one was owned by an elected official in the Netherlands. Twitter added that it does not believe any other former or current politicians had their DMs accessed. It is not clear how many of the accounts overlap with the 45 that tweeted a Bitcoin scam. Although Twitter has not named the Dutch official affected, local reports have indicated it is likely the far-right politician Geert Wilders. More information: https://www.bbc.
Trust and Security is a joint relationship with Technology platform providers and individual/end-user using the platform. While it’s important to look at this breach from the perspective of Twitter’s Corporate Environment, it’s also important to look at this breach from a High-Value end-user targeted perspective also. Those Twitter users considered “High-Value Targets” must stay security conscious around the clock and make decisions to protect themselves and limit their personal risk. I wonder how many of these High-Value Targeted individuals in the Twitter breach are security conscious and actively making personal risk-based decisions daily when signing up for new online and social media apps, accessing apps and sharing data via these online and social media apps? These individuals need to make sure they adhere to security best practices such as password hygiene, limiting access to their accounts to as few devices/individuals as possible and applying two-factor authentication on all loops, tools and logins.