What steps has Twitter taken in response?
As the hack escalated, Twitter took the unprecedented step on Wednesday of blocking all verified accounts from tweeting temporarily, as it worked to secure its services.
It has also locked the affected accounts until their owners can satisfactorily identify themselves and take back control. Its data download feature has also been temporarily disabled.
“We have also been taking aggressive steps to secure our systems while our investigations are ongoing, Twitter said on Thursday. “We’re still in the process of assessing longer-term steps that we may take and will share more details as soon as we can.”
Has any arrest been made?
Well-respected cybersecurity reporter Brian Krebs reported that at least one of the figures involved may have been a 21-year-old man from Liverpool, England.
There has yet to be any official confirmation, arrests, or attribution from Twitter or other authorities.
What was the fallout?
A lot of people are demanding answers.
“We have no evidence that attackers accessed passwords,” the company said. “Currently, we don’t believe resetting your password is necessary.”
In a statement on its website, Twitter said that the hack was caused by a “coordinated social engineering attack by people who successfully targeted some of our employees with access to internal systems and tools.” The admission suggests the company’s internal systems were compromised, and individual users were not at fault.
Who is tweeting?
Only 22 percent of U.S. adults reported using Twitter in 2019, compared to 69 percent who said they use Facebook.
The hack comes at a rough time for Twitter, which despite being a media darling and political prop, is struggling to retain ordinary users.
The company stopped sharing the number of total users on its platform in 2019 following months of consistent decline.
