Social Media

Twitter bug resulted in matching millions of user’s contact details

A researcher detected a flaw in the Twitter app which resulted in the matching of 17 million phone number details with the respective accounts.

Ibrahim Balic a security researcher found out that it was possible to match generated phone numbers with twitter accounts. He said that he was able to upload mobile phone numbers with the help of the contact upload feature in Twitter’s Android app. When users upload their number on Twitter, the data is fetched and stored automatically by the app.

These generated mobile phone numbers were matching with users residing in different countries like Israel, Iran, France, Germany, Armenia, and Greece, etc. Twitter, however, stopped Ibrahim Balic from doing so by blocking him from twitter on the 20th of December. Not just that Balic also tracked down high-profile personalities like Government officials and politicians.

Twitter after the exploitation came forward with a statement saying: “Upon learning of this bug, we suspended the account used to inappropriately access people’s personal information. Protecting the privacy and safety of the people who use twitter is our number one priority and we remained focused on rapidly stopping spam and abuse originating from the use of twitter’s APIs.”

This wasn’t the first time Twitter mishandled the information. In May last year, Twitter admitted of giving the data of the user’s location to a partner even if the user has canceled sharing its data on the app. In August, the company said it had given a lot of personal information to one of its ad partners. Last month Twitter confessed it had given off mobile phone information that users provided after two-factor authentication for the sake of serving targeted ads.

Twitter is now working day and night to fix this bug so that this feature wouldn’t be exploited by the hacking mafia. A few days ago Twitter’s android app asked the users to update the app due to some vulnerable reason. This was the reason why, the bug did not, however, affect the web version of Twitter.

Sponsored
Naima Rabbie

Leave a Comment
Share
Published by
Naima Rabbie

Recent Posts

WhatsApp Beta Partners with Google for Innovative Image Search Feature

When it comes to Android messaging apps, WhatsApp stands out as one of the best.…

28 mins ago

Farrukh Sabzwari Appointed as CEO of PSX, Set to Serve for Three Years

Farrukh H. Sabzwari has been appointed Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Pakistan Stock Exchange Company…

1 hour ago

250 Government Schools to Be Run by Private Sector

RAWALPINDI: The chairman of the Punjab Education Foundation, Malik Shoaib Awan, stated on Monday that…

2 hours ago

Pakistan Launches First National Sex Offenders Register to Combat Sexual Violence

Pakistan has taken a significant step towards addressing sexual violence and abuse with the introduction…

3 hours ago

SBP Chief Reports October Remittances Exceed $3 Billion

KARACHI: The State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) is anticipating $500 million from the Asian Development…

3 hours ago

Sindh Assembly Reveals 28,500 Govt Employees’ Spouses as Illegal BISP Beneficiaries

The Sindh Assembly was informed that over 28,500 employees of the provincial government were unlawfully…

4 hours ago