Cybersecurity is one aspect of the tech world on which a lot of emphasis has been laid on. A new incident in India throws light on yet another security breach issue, putting a question on the security measures taken in social media.
It is suggested that Pratik Sinha, co-founder of AltNews, had easily accessed the to-be-posted tweets by Pon Radhakrishnan, India’s minister of state for finance and shipping, present in the unprotected Google Docs.
Following this, Sinha manipulated the tweets and posted the opposite of the actual ones, presenting a negative picture. One of the tweets suggested that the Narendra Modi-led Indian government has failed to do anything for the middle-class and hasn’t done anything to enhance the wellbeing of society.
The motive behind altering the tweets and posting them publically was to highlight the lack of security involving essential government documents and establishing its importance.
How do you get a Union Minister to tweet what you want? Well, you go and edit the trending document made by BJP IT cell, and then you control what they tweet. Thread.
Here’s the video of this morning when their trending document got automagically updated ?
1/n pic.twitter.com/6DLwDPg2CV
— Pratik Sinha (@free_thinker) February 13, 2019
Pratik Sinha, in a phone call with TechCrunch, said, “I had fun, but it could have disastrous consequences,” he told TechCrunch in a phone interview. “This is a massive security issue from the point of view of a democracy.”
Additionally, the report suggests that Sinha was able to access the documents through a WhatsApp group of party members, on which further details were not revealed.
It is worth noting that Pon Radhakrishnan didn’t know about the access to the documents until the doctored tweets were published, following which they were deleted.
The incident is an example of a security breach that needs some attention, and we hope such documents remain secure.
