Websites are going to get hacked. It’s just a matter of when, not if, at this point. And that is especially true for the really popular sites, like Facebook, Google and the like.
There’s something really unnerving about state-sponsored hackings, though. The kind where governments, the ones with real power and authority, are responsible. Those kinds of breaches seem somehow worse.
Now Twitter has been the target one of one such incident, writing an email to some of its users over the weekend warning them that they may have been the victim of a state-sponsored breach.
Coldhak, a nonprofit organization based in Canada, posted a copy of the letter it received on its Twitter account.
“As a precaution, we are altering you that your Twitter account is one of a small group of accounts that may have been targeted by state-sponsored actors,” the email said. “At this time we have no evidence they obtained your account information, but we’re actively investigating this matter. We wish we had more to share, but we don’t have any additional information to share at this time.”
Some of the information that thet may have been trying to obtain includes email addresses, IP addresses and phone numbers.
We received a warning from @twitter today stating we may be “targeted by state-sponsored actors” pic.twitter.com/oZm83eVFC5
— coldhak (@coldhakca) December 11, 2015
A Twitter spokesperson has confirmed the accuracey of the email to CNET>
It’s no secret that governments are itching to get information out of Twitter. Even when they try to do it though legal means, the number of requests have shot up in the last year or so.
Starting in January of this year, and ending in June, Twitter received 4,363 requests for information from governments around the world. That is up 78% from the 2,871 it received in the last half of 2014. That represented the “largest increase in requests and affected accounts between reporting periods since we began publishing the Transparency Report in 2012,” the company said.
In all, Twitter produced information 58 percent of the time. That means that there’s plenty of incentive for countries who did not get information they wanted to go through other, less legal channels.
SInce Twitter did not specify which countries are potentially responsible, we can only guess, and two of them immediately come to mind.
First is North Korea. It was a year ago that that country was being blamed for the Sony hack. Remember the whole debacale with The Interview?
Even more likely, though, is that China was somehow involved. Even when North Korea was being blamed, some believed that China was actually behind it. And China has a history of hacking into U.S. systems.
Last year, the U.S. Department of Justice leveled charges against China for cyber espionage, marking the first time the U.S. ever leveled criminal charges against a foreign government for economic cyber spying.
This came after U.S. security firm Mandiant traced over 140 cyber attacks on U.S. and foreign businesses and organizations to a specific unit in China’s army known widely as the “Comment Crew” or the “Shanghai Group.” An assessment by the National Intelligence Estimate identified a pretty extensive range of sectors that have been impacted by China’s spying, including finance, IT, aerospace, automotive, and energy, among others. Some of the companies that have been hacked include Google—obviously—as well as drone manufacturers and the makers of nuclear weapons parts.
The country also attacked U.S. civilians. Community Health Systems, one of the largest providers of general hospital healthcare services in the United States revealed that it been hacked by an “Advanced Persistent Threat” group originating from China last August. Then, in September, a U.S. Senate panel found that Chinese hackers, who are associated with the Chinese government, were able to breach computer systems of U.S. airlines, technology companies and other firms involved in the movement of U.S. troops and military equipment,
Between June of 2012 and June of 2013, there were about 50 breaches, or other cyber events, into the computer networks of the military’s U.S. Transportation Command, or Transcom, contractors.
Twitter is also apparently not saying how many accounts may have been affected, or what it is doing to prevent such attacks in the future.
VatorNews has reached out to Twitter for more information. We will update this story if we learn more.
(Image source: news.wjct.org)
