India’s Cyber Agency Questions Twitter on Recent Account Hacks
If you’re not aware of Twitter’s recent account hacks, here’s a short introduction. On the afternoon of July 15th, popular Twitter accounts from various categories have been breached, letting the hacker post to impersonated tweets like asking for Bitcoin! High-profile accounts exploited in this incident were of known personalities like Barack Obama, Kanye West, Kim Kardashian, Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Joe Biden, etc. Further, there are institutional accounts like Apple and Uber too were exploited. Hackers here had posted tweets like asking followers to send Bitcoin to a specified address, and in return, they’d get double the amount. Though it being silly, reports reveal that over $120,000 worth of Bitcoins were sent to the hacker’s address! Thus, the campaign was successful. This raised many questions about Twitter’s integrity, where the platform said it was a coordinated social engineering attack on their employees! Yet, authorities are now running after Twitter to hear an explanation. India’s Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In) is one of them. As per the source of PTI, the government agency has posed questions to Twitter like how many Indian users had visiter the malicious tweets and links, and also whether they have been informed about the incident aftermath. The government has also asked full details about the hack, like the vulnerabilities exploited by hackers and their modus operandi in breaching the accounts. Further, what measures the company has taken to remedy the breach. All these, to protect the data of Indian users as per the source. CERT-In asking these questions to Twitter comes under IT Act of 2000 and CERT-In regulations of 2003. Via: TheWire
