On Wednesday, a security flaw in Tweetdeck led to the vulnerability of many Twitter users. Tweetdeck is an application that allows users to schedule Twitter posts and manage different accounts.
A tweet containing a dangerous computer code began to spread throughout the social networking site. The tweet was re-tweeted tens of thousands of times, meaning hackers could take control of accounts, unfollow people, or make posts.
The potential damage caused by this breach has dangerous implications in cyberbullying. This would be the perfect situation for masquerading, a type of cyberbullying that involves people taking on false identities to cause emotional harm.
Furthermore, perpetrators could obtain private information of Twitter users. This information could be dangerous in the wrong hands, potentially damaging the social and economic lives of users.
The attack was conducted by a cross-site scripting (XSS) flaw. Twitter told its users to log out of their accounts and back in. This reset had no effect on the security breach; Twitter temporarily shut down the application’s access to the tweets.
Tweetdeck services were resumed an hour after it was shut down.
It’s important to monitor the information you make available to social networking sites such as Twitter. Security breaches can happen at any moment, and controlling your exposure to the internet helps preserve your privacy and well-being.
