On 15 July, Twitter announced that it had suffered a data
security breach, which allowed the accounts of various world
leaders and prominent individuals to be compromised. As part
of its response to the breach, it shut down all 'blue tick'
verified accounts for about an hour, which naturally triggered
worldwide attention to the issue.
While according to Twitter's own
blog update, it is still investigating the
issue, we know already a reasonable amount about what
happened. To this end, it is a very timely reminder of the
risks of social engineering, when even one of the world's
leading technology companies can have its two-factor authentication
measures bypassed. It will also be interesting to see what
comes from the inevitable investigations and notifications –
it appears that personal information was compromised and so data
breach notification laws globally (think Californian Civil Code in
the USA, General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)
in Europe, Privacy
