It looks like all the mysterious bitcoins that were going on on Twitter for the past few days have been solved. The company has revealed a third party software company is behind these mishaps.
A spokesperson from Twitter confirmed this news to TNW. The hackers exploited a third party marketing software to create fake giveaways.
Google and Target were among the affectees. So it was a public relations problem for those two companies as well.
Twitter has not named the company responsible for the security loophole. But it is working hard to ensure something like this never happens again.
Target initially made a statement that its main Twitter account had been accessed by the hackers, but the company retracted this statement possibly due to these revelations.
Target was deeply concerned because the company has two million followers on Twitter. Any number of its followers getting hacked would have led to possible legal action against the supermarket chain.
Target was quick to make amends about its statement after realizing what had happened. The company later told TNW that it wasn’t their Twitter account that got hacked rather a third party marketing app had gotten hacked.
The marketing app had access to Target’s account which is why the hackers were able to hack into the supermarket giant’s account. This explains how this scam was able to take place at such a large level and with such a well-executed manner.
Twitter was already working closely with every account that got affected. As luck would have it Google’s g suite account got hacked as well.
There have been so many similar incidents in the past. Since many major social networks give access to third-party apps, many hackers look to exploit these apps. Facebook had been involved in the mega fiasco of close to 50 million accounts being hacked.
It was believed that the hack was due to a third party extension loophole. But Facebook later commented that the hack wasn’t due to a third party security flaw.
So it seems like there could be more to this news than we had first thought. Twitter was severely under pressure since the last few days because it did not have an immediate solution to these scams. But it looks like the answer has been presented to us to judge.
And judge we shall. Regardless, we need to be more aware of such security flaws and keep our passwords separate for email and every social media network.
Areen Zahra
Noor Imtiaz
