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Amazon, FBI.gov, and 70,000 Other Sites Are Sending Your Data to Elon's Twitter, New Research Says
In October, Elon Musk purchased Twitter for a cool $44 billion dollars. Among a variety of other assets and headaches, the deal came with one resource that’s gone under-explored: a vast data collection network spanning the sites of more than 70,000 Fortune 500 companies, government agencies, non-profits, universities, and more. Given Twitter’s history of security lapses, how safe is all that data?
At least 70,772 websites are using a Twitter advertising tool called a pixel to send the company information about every person who visits their sites, even people who don’t have Twitter accounts, according to a bombshell new report from Adalytics, an ad tech firm. The list includes the websites of government agencies—the Department of Homeland Security, the FBI, the Department of Education’s student aid portal—Fortune 500 behemoths—Amazon, General Motors, Pfizer—and health care companies like WebMD and UnitedHealth Group. General Motors, Pfizer, and other companies that claimed they pulled their ads from Twitter after Musk’s takeover continued to send Twitter data using the advertising Pixel.
By sending data to Twitter, organizations may be putting themselves and their visitors at serious risk. Twitter has a lengthy history of data breaches, infiltration by foreign governments, and fines for security issues by the FTC. Most recently, Twitter’s former head of security resigned and filed a whistleblower complaint accusing the company of disastrous security practices—and that was before Elon Musk laid off over half of Twitter’s staff, including swaths of its security team. Among a host of other tech companies that collect data using similar means, that makes Twitter particularly concerning.
The report also finds that many websites haven’t taken the proper precautions to avoid cyber threats known as a supply chain and code injection attacks, which could allow websites to be hijacked if Twitter was compromised. That’s an even bigger issue due to Twitter’s history of security problems and apparent lack of engineering staff. In such attacks, third party tools are compromised and used to infiltrate an organizations systems, a serious threat when you’re talking about Fortune 500 companies or FBI.gov. It’s unlikely, but this kind of attack has happened before, and a similar mechanism led to the SolarWinds hack which compromised much of the US government and private sector.
At least 70,772 websites are using a Twitter advertising tool called a pixel to send the company information about every person who visits their sites, even people who don’t have Twitter accounts, according to a bombshell new report from Adalytics, an ad tech firm. The list includes the websites of government agencies—the Department of Homeland Security, the FBI, the Department of Education’s student aid portal—Fortune 500 behemoths—Amazon, General Motors, Pfizer—and health care companies like WebMD and UnitedHealth Group. General Motors, Pfizer, and other companies that claimed they pulled their ads from Twitter after Musk’s takeover continued to send Twitter data using the advertising Pixel.
By sending data to Twitter, organizations may be putting themselves and their visitors at serious risk. Twitter has a lengthy history of data breaches, infiltration by foreign governments, and fines for security issues by the FTC. Most recently, Twitter’s former head of security resigned and filed a whistleblower complaint accusing the company of disastrous security practices—and that was before Elon Musk laid off over half of Twitter’s staff, including swaths of its security team. Among a host of other tech companies that collect data using similar means, that makes Twitter particularly concerning.
The report also finds that many websites haven’t taken the proper precautions to avoid cyber threats known as a supply chain and code injection attacks, which could allow websites to be hijacked if Twitter was compromised. That’s an even bigger issue due to Twitter’s history of security problems and apparent lack of engineering staff. In such attacks, third party tools are compromised and used to infiltrate an organizations systems, a serious threat when you’re talking about Fortune 500 companies or FBI.gov. It’s unlikely, but this kind of attack has happened before, and a similar mechanism led to the SolarWinds hack which compromised much of the US government and private sector.
https://gizmodo.com/elon-musk-twitter-amazon-fbi-70000-sites-data-security-1849867489
32 replies
= new reply since forum marked as read
= new reply since forum marked as read
if a VPN would protect me from this nefarious bullshit. I run the McAfee Security Suite and chose to have the VPN on always.
I'd hate to have that right-wing lunatic Musk knowing anything about me. 
I'll do that right now. 
