Twitter Reinforced Security Protocols After Bitcoin Hack

Twitter reinforced the security protocols on its platform after the major Bitcoin hack. The platform will now require all political and celebrity accounts to update their security to avoid a rerun of such hacks in the future. In today’s latest Bitcoin news, we are reading more about the update of the protocols.

Twitter reinforced the security protocols and unveiled the new set of measures ahead of US elections. Political accounts as well as the accounts of celebrities will be required to update their security. The move came after the major Twitter hack that happened in July, involving fraudulent BTC donations. The social media giant made the security updates to the platform ahead of the US elections according to the company’s statements:

 “As we learn from the experience of past security incidents and implement changes, we’re also focused on keeping high-profile accounts on Twitter safe and secure during the 2020 US election.”

The “high-profile” and election-related accounts were notified and required to carry out the security measures to protect their credentials. These accounts included all US executive branch and congress members as well as presidential campaigners, political parties, and governors as well as major US news outlets and political journalists. Twitter said that these accounts will be asked to use a stronger password and will enable two-factor authentication providing extra security and not just a username and password.

The password reset option will be automatically enabled to prevent unauthorized password changes. Other measures include detections and alerts to help them respond to suspicious activity and increased login defenses to prevent malicious accounts takeover attempts. The security features are not limited to certain users and anyone can take the steps to ensure privacy and the information is safe on the platform, according to the announcement.

Twitter got hacked in July by a 17-year old Florida teenager who was later released on bail and managed to access the god mode admin panel of the social media platform. The hackers accessed more than 25 influential twitter accounts such as Kim Kardashian, Joe Biden and Elon Musk. The tweets were sent out by accounts and combined 346 million Twitter followers and gathered more than $120,000 worth of BTC from users.

While the hacker used innocent methods to extract Bitcoin, the influence of Twitter on the global financial markets and politics meant massive damage if the access was used to tweet about a political problem, as Vitalik Buterin tweeted:

 “This attack could have caused serious damage. I’m actually glad a hacker motivated by Bitcoin profits got to the attack vector before far more nefarious actors seeking to leak private data, manipulate stock prices, manipulate elections or start wars did.”