Homework answers / question archive / Twitter hack exposes broader threat to democracy and society DeNardis, Laura

Twitter hack exposes broader threat to democracy and society DeNardis, Laura

Writing

Share With

Twitter hack exposes broader threat to democracy and society DeNardis, Laura . The Conversation U.S ; Boston [Boston]17 July 2020. ProQuest document link ABSTRACT (ENGLISH) A false warning about an impending terrorist attack from a major media company account could create a dangerous public panic. * National security. The affected accounts seemed to be "verified accounts" with the blue check mark meant to authenticate the identities of high-profile public figures. Because these accounts are potential hacking targets, Twitter recommends additional security such as having a second log-in verification check, and requiring personal information such as a phone number to reset a password. If anyone ever thought an individual has no agency in cybersecurity, simply recall the Democratic National Committee email data breach in advance of the 2016 U.S. presidential election. FULL TEXT In case 2020 wasn't dystopian enough, hackers on July 15 hijacked the Twitter accounts of former President Barack Obama, presidential hopeful Joe Biden, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Kim Kardashian and Apple, among others. Each hijacked account posted a similar fake message. The high-profile individual or company wanted to philanthropically give back to the community during COVID-19 and would double any donations made to a bitcoin wallet, identical messages said. The donations followed. The hack on the surface may appear to be a run-of-the-mill financial scam. But the breach has chilling implications for democracy. Serious political implications As a scholar of internet governance and infrastructure, I see the underlying cybercrimes of this incident, such as hacking accounts and financial fraud, as far less concerning than the society-wide political implications. Social media - and Twitter in particular - is now the public sphere. Using a hijacked account, it would be simple to wreak economic damage, start a national security crisis or create a social panic. Consider some of the potential threats to society posed by the takeover of technology infrastructure. * Market stability. Coordinated rogue tweets from the accounts of Apple, Facebook, Google, Netflix and Microsoft could easily crash the stock market, at least temporarily, eroding confidence in markets. * Societal panic. A false warning about an impending terrorist attack from a major media company account could create a dangerous public panic. * National security. Twitter is the platform of choice for President Donald Trump. A foreign adversary hijacking his account and announcing a nuclear strike on North Korea could be catastrophic. * Democracy. Hijacked accounts could sow well-timed political disinformation that sways or seeks to delegitimize the 2020 presidential election. As such, what happened is not about financial crime. It is a serious threat to us all. Politicians are rightly calling for hearings and investigations. The House Committee on Oversight and Reform PDF GENERATED BY PROQUEST.COM Page 1 of 4 ranking member, Kentucky Republican James Comer, issued a letter demanding answers from Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey about what happened. New York Governor Andrew Cuomo ordered a full investigation of the hack, warning that "Foreign interference remains a grave threat to our democracy." The FBI is investigating the incident. Social engineering On the day of the attack, Dorsey tweeted, "Tough day for us at Twitter. We all feel terrible this happened." But what did happen? Twitter disclosed that approximately 130 accounts were affected and that "attackers were able to gain control of the accounts and then send Tweets from those accounts." The affected accounts seemed to be "verified accounts" with the blue check mark meant to authenticate the identities of high-profile public figures. Because these accounts are potential hacking targets, Twitter recommends additional security such as having a second log-in verification check, and requiring personal information such as a phone number to reset a password. How were the accounts taken over? There are two general possibilities: Either hackers gained the login credentials, including passwords, or gained access to systems from inside the company. Twitter has, as of this writing, described the attack as having "successfully targeted some of our employees with access to internal systems and tools." In other words, it may have originated inside Twitter's secure system. But this explanation raises more questions. Are Twitter employees (or hackers) with unauthorized access to "internal systems" actually able to tweet from the account of someone like Joe Biden? Another major question is whether the hackers also were able to read the private direct messages in each of these accounts. To begin to regain trust, Twitter will have to clarify what happened and explain what the company will do to mitigate such an attack in the future. In terms of the tactics used, Twitter described the incident as having used social engineering, a term that refers to a cyberattack exploiting some human action. Examples include phishing attacks that prompt someone to click on a malicious link in an email or divulge a password or personal information. These techniques date back decades, such as the infamous I Love You attack of 2000, when emails with the subject line "I Love You" prompted people to download a virus-infected file, creating massive economic damage to companies. It can be a range of activities aimed at deceiving people into providing information useful to another party, such as a hacker trying to penetrate a company's network. The essential feature of a social engineering attack is that a human being is prompted to make an error in judgment. If anyone ever thought an individual has no agency in cybersecurity, simply recall the Democratic National Committee email data breach in advance of the 2016 U.S. presidential election. That incident in part originated via a phishing attack that tricked someone into disclosing email credentials. Cybersecurity is a problem of human psychology and cyberliteracy as well as a complex technical area. Not only do Twitter employees appear to be victims of social engineering, according to the initial explanation, but so too were those people who were tricked into giving bitcoin donations. Not just a tech company problem Cybersecurity is the great human rights issue of our time simply because the security of everything in our society from elections to health care to the economy - is dependent upon the security of the digital world. Private companies now mediate the public sphere and so they bear great responsibility for this security. From the Facebook Cambridge Analytica scandal to the Yahoo! data breach, tech companies have had trust problems. At the same time, the COVID-19 pandemic lays bare how much we need the digital world and must get cybersecurity right. The disclosure that the Twitter hack originated via a social engineering technique is a reminder that cybersecurity is an individual human responsibility as much as a technical or institutional one. We are all responsible. Twitter was originally not designed to be something so politically relevant. Now we all know it is. That's why this latest attack is so serious. Laura DeNardis receives funding from the Hewlett Foundation. PDF GENERATED BY PROQUEST.COM Page 2 of 4 AuthorAffiliation Laura DeNardis, Professor and Interim Dean, American University School of Communication DETAILS Subject: Internet crime; Presidential elections; Social networks; COVID-19 Business indexing term: Subject: Social networks People: Biden, Joseph R Jr Publication title: The Conversation U.S.; Boston Publication year: 2020 Publication date: Jul 17, 2020 Publisher: The Conversation US, Inc. Place of publication: Boston Country of publication: United States, Boston Publication subject: General Interest Periodicals--United States Source type: Newspapers Language of publication: English Document type: News ProQuest document ID: 2487141340 Document URL: http://ezproxy.umgc.edu/login?url=https://www.proquest.com/newspapers/twitterhack-exposes-broader-threat-democracy/docview/2487141340/se2?accountid=14580 Copyright: © 2021. This work is published under https://creativecommons.org/licenses/bynd/4.0/ (the “License”). Notwithstanding the ProQuest Terms and Conditions, you may use this content in accordance with the terms of the License. Last updated: 2021-02-14 Database: Publicly Available Content Database,Coronavirus Research Database LINKS Check SFX for Availability PDF GENERATED BY PROQUEST.COM Page 3 of 4 Database copyright ? 2021 ProQuest LLC. All rights reserved. Terms and Conditions Contact ProQuest PDF GENERATED BY PROQUEST.COM Page 4 of 4 Turnitin® This assignment will be submitted to Turnitin®. Instructions Task: Identify a news article that discusses a current event or social issue that relates to your field of study. Follow the instructions below to explain the issue, provide an additional example of the issue, connect the issue to your field of study, and pose questions about the issue. See the Assignment 1 Model in Week 2 Content for an example. Source: One news article, available through the UMGC Library, published within the past 12 months. Length: Responses to individual questions should follow the guidelines below, and the entire completed assignment should be at least 700 words. Formatting your assignment Incorporate these elements of APA style: • Use one-inch margins. • Double space. • Use an easy-to-read font between 12-point. Outcomes you should achieve by completing this assignment As you complete the tasks required for this assignment, you will be working toward severa of the course outcomes: • Begin the writing process by exploring a topic (Relates to course outcome 1) • Compose paragraphs that explain an event or issue (Relates to course outcome 2) • Demonstrate accurate grammar and mechanics in writing (Relates to course outcome 3) • Identify a recent and reliable news source and provide APA documentation (Relates to course outcome 4) Formatting your assignment Incorporate these elements of APA style: • Use one-inch margins. • Double space. • Use an easy-to-read font between 10-point and 12-point. Note: Title page is not required, but make sure you include your name and a title that reflects your topic at the top of the first page. Number your answers and/or include the assignment questions so your instructor can see that you addressed each part of the assignment. Respond to each of the following. 1. Provide an APA-style reference for the news article you selected. The format for the reference is as follows: Author, A. A. (Year, Month Day). Title of article in sentence case. Title of Newspaper in Title Case and Italics. http://www.newspaperhomepage.com Although the news article should be available through the UMGC Library, provide the URL directly to the newspaper that published the article. An APA reference entry does not link to a library database record. It does include the URL of the newspaper homepage, such as https://www.washingtonpost.com 2. For your instructor's reference, provide the URL to the article in the UMGC Library. This will be listed as "Document URL" in the library record 3. Summarize the article. Explain the event or issue covered in the article, assuming your reader has little or no prior knowledge of it. Answer in 1-2 paragraphs. 4. Describe a specific real-life situation (other than one discussed in your news article) where the issue at hand has been observed. This could be something that happened to you or someone you know, or it could be a related event in the news. Explain the connection to the event or issue in your news article. Answer in 1-2 paragraphs. 5. What is your field of study(INFORMATION SECURITY ANALYST) and how do you see it relating to the event or issue in your news article? Answer in one paragraph. 6. What do you want to know about the issue or event in your news article? List two or more questions that you could pursue as part of your research. Though you are listing two or more questions here, your research should ultimately be focused on a single guiding question. 1 Resilience and Improving the College Experience Joan Dunbar University of Maryland Global Campus 1. Nguyen, T. (2019, March 8). Reading, writing, and resilience: In the face of a student mental-health crisis, colleges incorporate wellness into the curriculum. The Chronicle of Higher Education. https://www.chronicle.com 2. Document URL: http://search.ebscohost.com.ezproxy.umgc.edu/login.aspx?direct=true&db=edsgao&AN=eds gcl.579342109&site=eds-live&scope=site 3. Summary In a recent article, Nguyen (2019) expresses concerns about college students' expectations on and off the campus. He explores colleges taking a progressive approach to students' mental wellness. For example, Nguyen sites University of Southern California as providing credit for a wellness class with very little accountability, but a culture of caring that seems to be missing in the current college curriculum. Published in the Chronicle of Higher Education, Nguyen's audience includes industry leaders and change agents in education. Readers can expect follow-up articles and emerging research on creating cultures of caring in education that the article remembers as part of the Jesuits' educational experience, but that has not been part of the mainstream university curriculum. Nguyen expects psychology departments to lead the way, with law schools, medical schools, and social sciences following the trend. The applications for creating a culture of caring 2 might overlap into other industries where stress impacts performance, such as the medical field or law enforcement. Though the course is still optional, it is well enrolled. Other colleges and universities will look to these early examples as they work to retain students, building stamina and ultimately resilience. Apparently, self-reflection and encouraging curiosity are cornerstones of the highly collaborative environment. In another example, John Hollway, associate dean of the University of Pennsylvania Law School, said, "Wellness is a set of life skills." He continues, "Those life skills are legal skills" (Nguyen, 2019, para 5). UPenn sees the program as part of their professional responsibility coursework that third-year law students take. Their wellness curriculum is founded in resilience training, optimistic vocabulary training, and stress management. 4. Related to Society/Life According to a recent CNN article by Walker (July, 2019), 22 high school shootings were reported in 2019. Such incidents impact thousands of young people headed for college and the world of work. Most comprehensive high schools enroll more than 1,000 students. Undoubtedly, students gathering for an opportunity to learn are not expecting to be targets. Obviously, more than just the students attending the schools where the shootings occurred are going to be impacted. Modern American society normalizes violence and despair, so it is no wonder young adults, many of whom are experiencing independence for the first time when they go to college, struggle with mental wellness. Add to the trauma with poverty, young families, multiple jobs, and just daily life, and it is a wonder such programs have not been in place before now. Students 3 facing the prospect of caring for themselves and their families find themselves ill-equipped to handle the stress of a full course load. 5. Related to Field of Study Educators, moving forward, will increasingly be trained in practices of care. Instructional practice will involve emotional wellness, character education, and generally dealing with the impact of living in an overtly violent and published world. Students must learn how to navigate the internet safely. They must learn to collaborate without fear of disapproval. Teachers and professors will lead the way with compassion and genuine concern for their students' well-being. The examples in the article suggest that the highest caliber learning institutions are forging the way, but it will be a grassroots movement at the classroom level that will make a difference in most students' lives. When instructors decide to care about the student before their content, their courses will take the first steps toward integrating mental wellness into their beloved content. 6. Questions that Remain 1. How will instructional leaders frame mental wellness amid a rigorous educational experience? 2. What other stakeholders might help young people in developing resilience as they earn a valuable degree? 3. What is the role of the individual student in achieving mental wellness and building resilience?