Twitter handles of Obama, Biden, Musk hacked to solicit digital currency

A series of high-profile Twitter accounts were hijacked on Wednesday, with some of the platform's top voices--including U.S. presidential candidate Joe Biden, reality television show star Kim Kardashian, former U.S. President Barack Obama, billionaire Elon Musk, and rapper Kanye West, among many others--used to solicit digital currency.
Nearly two hours after the first wave of hacks, the cause of the breach had not yet been made public. In a sign of the seriousness of the problem, Twitter took the extraordinary step of preventing at least some verified accounts from publishing messages altogether.

 

It was not clear whether all verified users were affected but, if they were, it would have a huge impact on the platform and its users. Verified users include celebrities, journalists, and news agencies as well as governments, politicians, heads of state, and emergency services.
Twitter did not offer clarification but said in a statement that users "may be unable to tweet or reset your password while we review and address this incident."
The unusual scope of the problem suggests hackers may have gained access at the system level, rather than through individual accounts. While account compromises are not rare, experts were surprised at the sheer scale and coordination of Wednesday's incident.
"This appears to be the worst hack of a major social media platform yet," said Dmitri Alperovitch, who co-founded cybersecurity company CrowdStrike.
Security breach
Some experts said it seemed probable that hackers had access to Twitter's internal infrastructure.
"It is highly likely that the attackers were able to hack into the back end or service layer of the Twitter application," said Michael Borohovski, director of software engineering at security company Synopsys.
"If the hackers do have access to the backend of Twitter, or direct database access, there is nothing potentially stopping them from pilfering data in addition to using this tweet-scam as a distraction," he said.
Twitter told Reuters just before 5 p.m. EDT that it was investigating what it later called a "security incident" and would be issuing a statement shortly. However, as of 7 p.m. the company had still not issued an explanation of what exactly took place.
Shares in the social media company tumbled almost 5 percent in trading after the market close before paring their losses.
Earlier, some of the platform's biggest users appeared to be struggling to re-establish control of their Twitter accounts. In the case of billionaire Tesla Chief Executive Elon Musk, for example, one tweet soliciting cryptocurrency was removed and, sometime later, another one appeared, and then a third.
Among the others affected: Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, investor Warren Buffett, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, and the corporate accounts for Uber and Apple . Several accounts of cryptocurrency-focused organizations were also hijacked.
Altogether, the affected accounts had tens of millions of users.
Biden's campaign was "in touch" with Twitter, according to a person familiar with the matter. The person said the company had locked down the Democrat's account "immediately following the breach and removed the related tweet." Tesla and other affected companies were not immediately available for comment.
Publicly available blockchain records show that the apparent scammers have already received more than $100,000 worth of cryptocurrency.
Several experts said the incident has raised questions about Twitter's cybersecurity.
"It's clear the company is not doing enough to protect itself," said Oren Falkowitz, former CEO of Area 1 Security.
Alperovitch, who now chairs the Silverado Policy Accelerator, said that, in a way, the public had dodged a bullet so far.
"We are lucky that given the power of sending out tweets from the accounts of many famous people, the only thing that the hackers have done is scammed about $110,000 in bitcoins from about 300 people," he said.

Twitter aims to axe manipulated media tweets, seeks public opinion

Twitter on Monday said it is drafting rules for its platform to curb "manipulated media" which aims to mislead people, and said steps could include removing tweets that contain such altered content capable of threatening someone's physical safety.
The microblogging platform has sought public views on the proposed rules that entail placing a notice adjacent to the tweets that indulge in sharing such "deepfakes".

Twitter also proposes to warn people before they share or like tweets with synthetic or manipulated media, and may even add a link of a news article for example, to allow people to read more about why various sources believe that the media is fake.
"In addition, if a Tweet including synthetic or manipulated media is misleading and could threaten someone's physical safety or lead to other serious harm, we may remove it," Twitter said in a statement.
Twitter said its feedback window will close on November 27, after which it will review inputs and begin the process of incorporating the policy into its rules as well as train enforcement teams on handling such content.
"We will make another announcement at least 30 days before the policy goes into effect," it said.
Deepfake technology can be misused to manipulate videos to show people saying things they never said. This gained eyeballs in April last year, when Jordan Peele created a video that was doctored to show as if former President Barack Obama was making derogatory remarks about US President Donald Trump. If such content makes its way to social media, the ramifications could be damaging.
Twitter said it routinely engages with experts and researchers. Accordingly, it proposes to define synthetic and manipulated media as "any photo, audio, or video that has been significantly altered or fabricated in a way that intends to mislead people or changes its original meaning".
These are sometimes referred to as deepfakes or shallowfakes, it added.
Twitter said it has called for public feedback as it wants to ensure that as an open service its rules reflect the voice of the people who use Twitter.
"Deliberate attempts to mislead or confuse people through manipulated media, undermine the integrity of the conversation," it added.
The feedback has been sought through a brief survey that is available in English, Hindi, Arabic, Spanish, Portuguese and Japanese.
For other languages, Twitter said its team is working closely with local non-governmental organisations and policy-makers to ensure their perspectives are represented. It also invited users to tweet their feedback.

Twitter apologises for suspending accounts before Tiananmen anniversary

Twitter Twitter has apologised for suspending a number of accounts critical of China, days before the politically sensitive 30th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square crackdown.
The apology came after activists said hundreds of Twitter accounts critical of Communist Party -- from "inside and outside" China -- were suspended last week.

Despite being blocked in China, Twitter and other overseas social media sites have long been used by activists and government critics to address subjects that are censored on domestic forums.
But in this case, Twitter said Saturday that Chinese authorities had not reported the accounts or asked for their suspension.
Instead, the firm said they were caught up in an ongoing effort to clear up accounts "engaging in various forms of platform manipulation, including spam and other inauthentic" behaviour.
"Among the blocked accounts were some belonging to dissident writers and an activist who has helped document the disappearance of Uighurs -- a Turkic-speaking minority in China's restive Xinjiang region," said Cao Yuexin, founder of human rights site China Change.
US Senator Marco Rubio tweeted that the platform had become a "Chinese govt censor".
"Sometimes our routine actions catch false positives or we make errors," Twitter said.
"We apologize. We're working today to ensure we overturn any errors but that we remain vigilant in enforcing our rules for those who violate them." But activists said Sunday that the social media giant owed users a fuller explanation of what happened. Discussions of the 1989 pro-democracy protests and its military suppression that led to hundreds of deaths are taboo in China.
China's army of online censors have scrubbed clean Chinese social media, removing articles, memes, hashtags or photos alluding to the crackdown ahead of its 30 anniversary on June 4.
All language versions of Wikipedia -- whose pages include details about the Tiananmen crackdown -- were blocked from the Chinese internet weeks ago.

We don't review, prioritise policies based on political ideology: Twitter

Facing heat over allegations of political bias in the country, Twitter Friday said the microblogging platform is committed to remain unbiased and that its product, as well as policies, are never based on political ideology.
Twitter, which counts India among its biggest markets, asserted that the company "does not take any actions based upon political views or viewpoints", neither does it use political ideology to rank content on its service.

The statement comes against the backdrop of the Parliamentary panel on information technology asking Twitter officials to appear before it on February 11 over the issue of safeguarding citizens' rights on social media platforms.
"There has been a lot of discussion about Twitter and political bias in India in recent weeks and the global real-time communication platform today set the record straight... Twitter is a platform where voices from across the spectrum can be seen and heard. It is committed to the principles of openness, transparency, and impartiality," Twitter said in a statement.
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The social media giant has been summoned days after the members of Youth for Social Media Democracy, a right-wing group, protested outside its office alleging that Twitter has acquired an "anti-right-wing attitude" and has been blocking their accounts.
In its statement Friday, Twitter argued that the content that appears in users' timelines, or the manner in which the company enforces its policies are impartial and said that it is "committed to remain unbiased with public interest in mind".
"Twitter's product and policies are never developed nor evolved on the basis of political ideology... Abuse and hateful conduct comes from accounts across the ideological spectrum and Twitter will continue to take action when its rules are broken," it added.
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The US-based company said it has a specialised, global team that enforces its rules with impartiality and that its India employees do not make enforcement decisions - which "by design" ensures fairness and objectivity.
"Twitter does not review, prioritise, or enforce its policies on the basis of political ideology. Every Tweet and every account is treated impartially. We apply our policies fairly and judiciously for all. If there are 'false positive' decisions, these are not political statements of intent; they are the basic human error rate of running the fastest, most open conversational tool in history," Twitter Global VP (Public Policy) Colin Crowell said.
The company stated that the public verification process on its platform is currently closed.
Twitter said it is working with Indian political parties to verify candidates, elected officials, and relevant party officials whose accounts will be active in the public conversation.
"To be clear, the parties themselves select the accounts for verification and then Twitter reviews these accounts to ensure they meet the company's verification standards," it said.
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Twitter emphasised that it verifies these accounts to "empower healthy election conversations" and to "provide confidence that these public figures are whom they claim to be".
"India is the world's largest democracy, and one of our fastest-growing audience markets globally. Twitter's real-time and open nature facilitates robust civic engagement on topics of national and local interest during elections. We are committed to surfacing all sides of the conversation as we enter the election season in this extraordinarily diverse cultural, political and social climate," Crowell said.
He added that the company endeavours to be "even more transparent in how we develop and enforce our policies to dispel conspiracy theories and mistrust".
With ensuing general elections, the Indian government had warned social media platforms of strong action if any attempt was made to influence the country's electoral process through undesirable means.
The Government is also proposing to amend IT rules, wherein social media, online platforms and messaging apps will be made more accountable and be mandated to deploy tools to identify and curb unlawful content as well as follow stricter due diligence practices.
Over the last few months, social media players like Facebook, Twitter, and Google have promised to infuse more transparency into political advertisements on their platform, and have since announced a slew of measures as part of election integrity efforts.