Back in July, Twitter became the target of cyberattackers that hijacked high-profile accounts to run a bitcoin scam. Now, the company has published a post detailing how it’s keeping Twitter secure and making sure that incident won’t happen again, especially since it’s election season in the US. For starters, it has been strengthening the rigorous checks team members with access to customer data must undergo.
As the company explains, some of its teams need access to user data to keep Twitter running. While it usually only grants them access for valid reasons, such as to help users who’ve been locked out of their accounts, it’s had to tighten its measures even further. In its first statement issued after the July attack, Twitter said the infiltrators staged a coordinated social engineering attack targeting employees with access to internal systems and tools. (A Wired report reveals what happened behind the scenes after the attack, such as the company having employees change passwords in front of their managers and having to prove they are who they say they are.)