The multitude of Twitter accounts that were hacked a couple of weeks ago served as a brutal reminder that any online account or app is only as secure as the parent app’s weakest subsidiary app or third-party service provider.
Previously, major companies – Netflix, Marvel and The NFL – have been victims of such hacks. However, the only consequence of such hacks was nothing more than a short-lived post that conveyed the fact that the corresponding accounts were compromised.
On the other hand, the McDonalds twitter plastered the internet with derogatory posts about President Trump, according to reports by CNET.
The posters, using access to @ McDonaldsCorp, the fast-food giant’s official Twitter page, spoke against President Trump by calling him a ‘disgusting excuse for a President.”
Similar to what happened to previous victims, these posts stayed on feed for about half an hour before they were deleted by the account’s proper owners and moderators.
McDonalds is still investigating the issue to settle if this were a simply a rogue employee or a proper twitter hack.
Other than McDonalds, several multinational organizations and celebrities – including BBC North America, Forbes, Amnesty International and even Justin Bieber’s Japanese twitter account – were hacked and proliferated messages in Turkish that also included a swastika and hashtags that translated to “Nazi Germany, Nazi Holland.”
As was observed and reported by Wired, these hacks stem from the ascending internecine warfare between Turkey and the Netherlands. Messages such as “See you on April 16” and labels for the hack such as ‘little Ottoman slap’ are at the forefront of the cyber-attack on twitter.
Wired further reported that the tweets were meant to bring into focus the fact that Turkey will hold a referendum on April 16 to continue under the tenure of President Recep Erdogan. The online profiles of multinational corporations served as the perfect stage to grab the attention of people and communities the world over.
At the beginning of this week, several accounts have taken control from the hackers. Further investigations by Twitter have revealed that a third party enclitics app, called Twitter Counter, compromised the security of Twitter’s main customer base.
A Twitter Counter Spokesperson told CNBC by email that, “Before any definite findings, we’ve already taken measures to contain such abuse of our users’ accounts, assuming it is indeed done using our system – both blocking all ability to post tweets using our system and changing our Twitter app key.” The spokesperson further elaborated that Twitter Counter does not store any users’ credentials nor any credit card information.
“Michigan Tech, too, was recently a victim of several phishing attacks. Any online account, no matter how secure, can potentially be hacked. Given the internet’s outreach, an online platform can make or mar the world, bit by bit,” said Neel Desai, a physics PhD student at Michigan Tech.
