With an official announcement made by Twitter itself, the famous social network has announced that the security level of some accounts will be raised in view of the US presidential elections in the coming months, as the recent Bitcoin-themed attacks have made it clear that perhaps the platform is not so secure.
Twitter is focused on keeping high-profile accounts safe and secure during the US election.
Starting today, a group of Twitter accounts in the US will see this notification detailing some security measures we’ll be requiring or strongly recommending going forward. pic.twitter.com/3FjRpZcmA9
— Government (@Gov) September 17, 2020
Twitter and Bitcoin
Twitter allows to get the famous blue tick verification, it is enough to look for that badge to confirm whether the contents are authentic.
This, however, in the case of an attack on a single account, is not necessary and indeed this is what happened when profiles of public figures were hacked and told followers to send Bitcoin.
Increasing the security of Twitter
From what can be read in the post, Twitter has selected a number of key accounts for the US presidential elections:
- Accounts related to the US Congress and the US executive;
- Governors of American states and secretaries of state;
- Presidential campaigns, political parties and candidates who are running for the White House, Senate or governor;
- The main American news sites and journalists dealing with politics.
The measures that will be taken are very stringent.
Specifically, Twitter will operate in this way:
- Update the password with a very strong one;
- Mandatory default reset that requires an email associated with the account, or a phone number provided when creating the account;
- The invitation to use 2-factor authentication (2FA) as an additional measure of access to the platform.
In addition to these new features, systems will also be introduced to protect the platform, so as to avoid what happened several months ago with the Bitcoin attack, when criminals managed to break into several accounts of exponents from the crypto and blockchain world, but not only them, asking to send Bitcoin (BTC) in order to receive higher amounts.
Surely the problem of attacks, external and internal, on social platforms is very serious and in cases like the one of political elections the aim is to try to avoid the vote being influenced in some way, as it happened in the past by using algorithms to drive the choice of voters in favour of one candidate rather than another.
