Twitter Internal Tool That Led To Massive Hack Was Accessible To More Than 1,000 Workers: Report

Twitter Inc. TWTR internal tool, which was used in the infamous Bitcoin scam earlier this month, could be accessed by more than 1,000 employees at the company as of earlier this year, according to a Reuters report Thursday.

What Happened 

The access to the tool wasn't just limited to the social media company's employees, and even workers at contractors like Cognizant Technology Solutions Corporation CTSH could access it, former Twitter employees told Reuters.

The people familiar with the matter said Twitter does have a system to log the activity of workers searching for records, but the protocol is more useful for investigations after the fact, rather than preventing the breach from happening at all.

The platform needs to put in place alarms and constant reviews to better protect itself from breaches, according to the Reuters sources.

"That sounds like there are too many people with access,” former AT&T Inc. T Chief Security Officer Edward Amoroso told the newswire.

Amoroso added that the access rights should be restricted to a lot less people, with authentication from at least two people required for anyone to make the most sensitive account changes.

Why It Matters

The massive attack on Twitter affected over 100 high-profile users, including Democratic 2020 presidentical candidate Joe Biden, Tesla Inc. TSLA CEO Elon Musk, and Microsoft Corporation MSFT co-founder Bill Gates.

Private messages of at least 36 people were compromised during the attack, the social media firm confirmed Wednesday.

CFO Ned Segal revealed Twitter has seen a 34% monthly daily active user growth in Q2, which translates into 45 million more users than the same period last year.

The social media platform acknowledged last week’s security breach as serious and said it wants to be transparent in sharing what happened and how to fix it.

Price Action 

Twitter shares closed 4.06% higher at $38.44 on Thursday, and fell almost 0.3% in the after-hours session.