The Big Bitcoin Twitter scam: It’s Implications on the Mega-Rich & the Terribly-Poor
On July 15th, twitter’s half a billion large user-base experienced a severe blow in the form of a bitcoin scam. The coordinated cyber-attack targeted the accounts of some of the platform’s biggest power users; within a span of a few minutes’ accounts belonging to the likes of Elon Musk, Barack Obama and Joe Biden (among many others) posted near identical tweets, all aimed at extorting bitcoins from naïve and vulnerable users of the social media platform.
While the technical details of the breach are still unclear, sources speculate the hackers might have gained unsolicited access to the company’s administrative “panel”. According to a trusted source on Fortune.com, the hackers gained control of an internal software accessible only to company employees. While the application is used for things as varied as account suspensions and advertising campaigns, in this case the hackers managed to “come in sideways” and exploit the application’s vulnerabilities to send a tweet from any account.
For the first time in human history, we reside in an era where more of our personal information is stored “digitally”, rather than “physically”. While the contributions of technology towards the advancement of our society are irrefutable, the “contributions” are laced with several caveats. Given that much of our lives are now “online”, I have some unfortunate news for you: your data is never entirely safe! If there is one thing this incident has made crystal clear, it is the fact that much of the social divisions that our society revolves around, do not exist in the online world. No one is ever too rich, or too poor to have their data stolen and their identity jeopardized. Consequently, such incidents have time and time again served as wake-up calls, showing internet users how vulnerable they all are while using the world wide web.
Hacking and data breaches are slowly becoming the new normal in the online world, and we might not really be as invincible on the internet as we assumed .But what does all this mean for us regular folks? Should we live under a rock and stop sharing data altogether? Well, no..not exactly. Taking simple precautions to manage your data online can drastically decrease fallout if your data is ever compromised. Here are some suggestions to keep yourself safe online (as recommended by kaspersky.com)
1. BE CAUTIOUS WHILE REVEALING SENSITIVE INFORMATION ONLINE
When communicating with people over the internet, be it with acquaintances over a social media platform, or with clients at work, never reveal more information about yourself than is necessary. You wouldn’t go around giving out your personal information out to strangers individually — don’t hand it out to millions of people online.
2. TURN YOUR PRIVACY SETTINGS ON
Social media platforms like Facebook and Google love to know all about your browsing habits and internet usage, but so do hackers. Luckily, all browsers and social media platforms have setting available to turn on your privacy settings. Make sure you have these settings on and keep them enabled at all times.
3. ALWAYS USE A SECURE INTERNET CONNECTION OR A VPN
Connecting to a public Wi-Fi is like cyber-security suicide. You have no control over the security of the network and are vulnerable to numerous attacks. My five cents, avoid it at all costs. If you absolutely have to use it though, using a secure VPN connection might reduce your risks significantly.
What is a VPN?
A VPN (Virtual Private Network) connects you to a “virtual” network and masks your identity online. Anytime you access the internet, you are assigned an “IP address” which is a numerical combination that is similar to a street address . This IP address is network specific, and just like a street address, every network has one, allowing you to be tracked down as easily as with a regular street address. A VPN replaces your real IP addresses with the IP address of the gateway, which can be located in a different country, essentially masking some of your identity online and making you more secure while using the world wide web.
4. CREATE STRONG PASSWORDS
A password can be thought of as the key to the door beyond which we store a plethora of our personal information. Cyber-criminals bank on the fact that millions of people use easy to guess passwords like “password”, “123456” or some version of their own names. Once hackers gain access to even one account, they then have access to a multitude of your information, acting as a domino.
Despite the extent of this attack, twitter users have taken it all in good stride and even found it in them to humor the incident.
