Twitter Leak Brings Out Concerns Of Data Breach

Elon Musk instructed the current head of security to provide screenshots of user accounts, giving outside writers access to Twitter Inc.’s internal information.

Journalist Bari Weiss shared screenshots showing internal systems to which very few people have access as he is in charge of moderating content. In these images, we could see a translucent label and a watermark that the images were taken from the perspectives that only employees of Twitter’s head of trust and security, Ella Irwin, can access.

These captures raise concerns about whether or not Weiss had access to the internal account of Twitter’s head of trust and security, which would mean that he would also have access to users’ private messages and confidential information, according to systems experts.

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Twitter’s head of trust and security came out to declare that the screenshots posted by Weiss had been taken by herself, “For security purposes, the requested screenshots came from me to ensure that no PII was exposed” or information of personal identification,” Irwin said on Twitter. Reporters did not access user messages.

After Twitter was hacked two years ago, watermarks were added to employee accounts to make it easier to identify where screenshots of internal systems came from.

Weiss did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Musk turned over these screenshots and emails from former Twitter employees as a collection of internal documents to reporters who are now publishing them.

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Earlier this month, Elon said that Weiss and Matt Taibbi have unlimited access to the social network’s files. This worries people; access of that magnitude violates their 2022 privacy agreement with the Federal Trade Commission.

Alex Stamos, who was previously in charge of security at Meta Platforms Inc., said: “It sounds like the Weiss thread should be enough for the FTC to open an investigation into a consent decree violation and maybe get a subpoena for the Twitter internal access logs.”

The Twitter FTC settlement stipulates that employee access to sensitive user account data is only granted to individuals with a valid business justification for accessing such data. Executives who would have approved such access, or investigated its misuse, have left the company.

“The only condition we agreed to was that the material would be posted on Twitter first.” “Authors have broad and growing access to the Twitter archives,” Weiss said Thursday via Twitter.