Security inquiry group Access Now has discovered a cagey attack being used against influential societal media users as a means of circularise faux news . The “ Doubleswitch ” not only involves hijacking verify accounts but makes it extremely difficult for the legitimate proprietor to regain mastery of their handle .
According tothe reputation , activists and journalists in Venezuela , Bahrain , Myanmar , and elsewhere have been targeted with this method . The finish to spread out misinformation and silence the target , but the attacker are also cancel previous posts that they do n’t care .
The idea of the Doubleswitch is fairly simple . The cyberpunk pick out ascendence of a verified account statement through the common method acting like email phishing . Then , the hacker convert the email and password on the account . Let ’s say the victim is New York Times reporterMaggie Haberman(@maggieNYT ) , who has 491,000 followers . The first substitution comes when the cyber-terrorist changes her score name to Bernie Sanders and changes her handle to @BernieSander , a single letter being different than the existent Bernie . Now , the hack has an account with a lot of followers who might trust Bernie and the account looks like legitimate . Meanwhile , Haberman has been lock away out of her account and automated retrieval is reach the hacker ’s electronic mail who informs Twitter that everything is fine .
The second switch get when the hacker starts a unexampled history with the hold @maggieNYT and name Maggie Haberman . Now , they have Haberman ’s logical - looking but unverified account . The cyber-terrorist proceeds to disseminate fake news show through both accounts and user click retweet as they go about their solar day .
chirrup doeshave a formfor reporting issues that will be reviewed by humans but it ’s a slower process . And this problem is n’t just relegated to Twitter but all social media that offer verification . The good defense against it is two - element authentication . But in some land , like Venezuela which is where Access Now found the first representative of the proficiency , militant and journalist avoid associating personal information with the account . What Access Now suggests is that these services should be more proactive in offering other variant of multi - factor hallmark , like an app - base solution .
[ Access NowviaThe Hacker News ]
HackingX ( Twitter )
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