Showing posts with label 2018 at 01:17PM. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 2018 at 01:17PM. Show all posts

Friday 4 May 2018

Don't Panic, Twitter Warns Users To Change Password After Bug Leaves Details Exposed


Twitter is currently warning all of its 330 million users to change their passwords after it found a bug that left user details exposed on an internal system. 

Unfortunately, if you use a third party platform to access Twitter, like the now defunked Twittelator Pro, you won't see the warning. This only appears on the original Twitter app.

The company is saying that nobody breached the system and said it was warning users out of an “abundance of caution”, although the warning is disarming for users at a time of heightened concerns over internet privacy. 

Twitter said the bug meant that passwords were stored without “hashing”, or encryption. While Twitter does encrypt user passwords, the bug meant they were also accidentally stored in normal text on an internal system, although it's not clear how many passwords were exposed in this way.

DON’T PANIC
Twitter is assuring users it was not breached and that although the passwords were exposed by the glitch there was "no indication of breach or misuse by anyone". 

Twitter’s head of technology Parag Agrawal initially tried to play down the bug, saying the company didn’t have to share the news, but later backtracked claiming he thought it was “the right thing to do”.
THE DANGER WITHIN

While the episode appears to have done no lasting damage to Twitter (its shares have remained steady so far) the danger to users from an internal leak are in the spotlight. 

Facebook was this week revealed to have fired an employee who described himself as a “professional stalker”, using the company’s user database to search for information on Tinder matches. 

Facebook even has a internal system for when an employee accesses another’s account, known as a “Sauron alert”. There is no such warning for users, prompting concerns on how much data social network employees can find on users without them knowing.



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Tuesday 1 May 2018

WhatsApp’s Founder Jan Koum Quits Facebook, Following Differences Over Privacy.


When Facebook paid $19bn for WhatsApp in 2014, it seemed like an astonishing price for a messaging app that had very little revenue. Four years later, it now has more than a billion users, but still barely makes a cent.

Much of that might be down to Jan Koum, WhatsApp’s founder and, until yesterday, its boss, who has always sought to keep the app independent. Koum announced last night that he was leaving Facebook to collect rare Porsches and play ultimate frisbee.

It has to be one of the better Silicon Valley leaving notes; the question now is what happens to WhatsApp

ENCRYPTED DEPARTURE
Koum did not elaborate on why he was leaving WhatsApp, but the Washington Post reports that his departure is down to clashes with Facebook management over the parent company's apparent attempts to use personal data and weaken encryption.

WhatsApp’s founder, who grew up in Communist Ukraine, has always been a staunch privacy supporter and occasionally a critic of advertising-supported social media, and it seems possible that his philosophy differed from Mark Zuckerberg’s.

WHAT’S NEXT FOR WHATSAPP?
Since buying WhatsApp, Facebook has struggled with the question how to make money from it. An initiative to have businesses pay to communicate through the service has often been mulled, but so far struggled to take off.

Meanwhile the app’s encryption has often been criticised by politicians and police, who say it makes it more difficult to catch criminals. Interestingly, Koum’s departure comes as Russia and Iran both crack down on encrypted app Telegram.

As Facebook itself faces growing political scrutiny, could the company be tempted to weaken WhatsApp’s encryption as a potential bargaining chip

Source : Telegraph.


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