US Senator wants answers from Dorsey on Twitter breach that appears to be inside job – The Sociable

On the day of what appears to be the largest breach in Twitters history, US Senator Josh Hawley pens an open letter to Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey asking him to explain what happened as fingers point to Twitter employees involved in the scam.

.@jack @Twitter work with the FBI and DOJ to secure your platform. Now. Then give the public an accounting of how much of their personal info you lost today pic.twitter.com/Yn2q4Yr8Xx

Josh Hawley (@HawleyMO) July 16, 2020

Yesterday, high profile accounts on Twitter were compromised and taken over in an apparent bitcoin-related scam, although the full scale of the attack has yet to be publicly assessed.

The Twitter accounts affected by the breach included those of Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Elon Musk, Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, and others.

On Wednesday Senator Hawley called on Twitter to work with the FBI and DOJ to better secure its platform and asked that Dorsey answer the following questions:

Shortly after Twitter acknowledged the security incident all blue-checked accounts were temporarily suspended from tweeting on Wednesday evening.

In a bizarre turn of events, Joseph Cox wrote in Motherboard that the bitcoin heist was allegedly made possible by a Twitter employee who helped the scammers pull it off.

Cox wrote that Motherboard was in contact with two sources who took over accounts, with one source declaring, We used a rep that literally done all the work for us.

The second source said that the Twitter employee was paid to take over the high profile accounts.

Backing up these claims, Twitter issued a statement saying that it believes some of its employees with access to internal systems and tools were successfully targeted.

We detected what we believe to be a coordinated social engineering attack by people who successfully targeted some of our employees with access to internal systems and tools.

Twitter Support (@TwitterSupport) July 16, 2020

Statements from the anonymous sources, along with screenshots obtained by Motherboard,suggest that Twitter employees on the inside were able to access the high-profile accounts using an internal tool at Twitter.

Screenshots of the alleged internal tool, if proven to be authentic, raise even more alarm bells about the inner workings of the platform.

The screenshots showed colored buttons, on two of which were written, Trends Blacklist and Search Blacklist.

Twitter has long claimed not to shadow ban, and the public isnt privy to what exact trends and searches may be blacklisted, but seeing buttons for blacklisting trends and searches is concerning to many users with serious questions about the platforms integrity.

I cant post the linked screenshots from Twitters admin panel but I have to ask

What is search blacklist and trends blacklist pic.twitter.com/f6DAw3zzqu

Tim Pool (@Timcast) July 16, 2020

Twitter tells you straight up, We do not shadow ban, but Twitter admits to making content more difficult to find, which in my opinion sounds like a part of shadowbanning.

You are always able to see the tweets from accounts you follow (although you may have to do more work to find them, like go directly to their profile). And we certainly dont shadow ban based on political viewpoints or ideology, reads a Twitterblog post from 2018(emphasis mine).

We caught a Twitter software engineer RED HANDED when he admitted that Twitter #ShadowBans to our undercover journalist. Twitter will never admit it: its a lot of bad press if, like, people figure out that youre like shadow banning them. Its like, unethical in some way. pic.twitter.com/MmBGKohWLj

James OKeefe (@JamesOKeefeIII) July 26, 2018

Wednesdays Twitter breach exposed not only how vulnerable the platform is and how its own employees could compromise the account of a presidential candidate, but that Twitter may also have been misleading the public about its policies with questions arising over blacklistings.

Symptoms of shadowbanning on social media for your diagnosis

Twitter acknowledges security incident as high profile accounts reportedly hacked in bitcoin-related scam

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US Senator wants answers from Dorsey on Twitter breach that appears to be inside job - The Sociable