Twitter API | Breaking Cybersecurity News | The Hacker News

Twitter today issued a warning revealing that attackers abused a legitimate functionality on its platform to unauthorizedly determine phone numbers associated with millions of its users' accounts. According to Twitter, the vulnerability resided in one of the APIs that has been designed to make it easier for users to find people they may already know on Twitter by matching phone numbers saved in their contacts with twitter accounts. To be noted, the feature worked precisely as intended, except someone was not supposed to upload millions of randomly generated phone numbers and abuse Twitter to reveal profiles associated with the contact information users added to Twitter for enabling security features. Though the company is not sure if the bug was exploited by only a single adversary or multiple groups, it has identified several accounts engaged in the attack located in a wide range of countries, primarily from Iran, Israel, and Malaysia. Based on their IP addresses, Twitt...

The security and privacy issues with APIs and third-party app developers are something that's not just Facebook is dealing with. A bug in Twitter's API inadvertently exposed some users' direct messages (DMs) and protected tweets to unauthorized third-party app developers who weren't supposed to get them, Twitter disclosed in its Developer Blog on Friday. What Happened? Twitter found a bug in its Account Activity API (AAAPI), which is used by registered developers to build tools to support business communications with their customers, and the bug could have exposed those customers' interactions. The Twitter AAAPI bug was present for more than a year—from May 2017 until September 10—when the microblogging platform discovered the issue and patched it "within hours of discovering it." In other words, the bug was active on the platform for almost 16 months. "If you interacted with an account or business on Twitter that relied on a developer...

Vulnerability Management (VM) has long been a cornerstone of organizational cybersecurity. Nearly as old as the discipline of cybersecurity itself, it aims to help organizations identify and address potential security issues before they become serious problems. Yet, in recent years, the limitations of this approach have become increasingly evident.  At its core, Vulnerability Management processes remain essential for identifying and addressing weaknesses. But as time marches on and attack avenues evolve, this approach is beginning to show its age. In a recent report, How to Grow Vulnerability Management into Exposure Management (Gartner, How to Grow Vulnerability Management Into Exposure Management, 8 November 2024, Mitchell Schneider Et Al.), we believe Gartner® addresses this point precisely and demonstrates how organizations can – and must – shift from a vulnerability-centric strategy to a broader Exposure Management (EM) framework. We feel it's more than a worthwhile read an...