How Rahul, Congress Twitter accounts may have been hacked

New Delhi As the news of Congress Party and its Vice President Rahul Gandhis Twitter accounts being hacked spread like wildfire on Thursday cyber experts were not surprised as the phenomenon is quite common across the globe where hackers are always a step ahead when it comes to data breach be it a social media platform or your financial informationWhen it comes to celebrities Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey Google CEO Sundar Pichai Twitter cofounder and former CEO Evan Williams US actorsinger Jack Black even the deceased Beatle George Harrison have seen their social media accounts being hacked in recent timesEven social networking websites with twostep verification procedures are not secure any more as hackers have evolved various strategies to steal personal information from computers laptops or smartphonesThere may be a possibility that Rahul Gandhis Twitter account was logged into from an unsecured computer or a device that did not have nextgeneration firewall an updated antivirus software or from a compromised IP address This situation is a boon for hackers who are constantly searching for security flaws and hack into the social media accounts of celebrities and political leaders Anoop Mishra one of the nations leading social media experts told IANSAccording to Saket Modi Cofounder and CEO of IT risk assessment and digital security services provider Lucideus the social media hack of both Congress Party and its Vice Presidents Twitter accounts can be a result of any one of two possibilitiesIt can either be a potential backdoor malware being present on a computer system on which both the accounts might have been simultaneously accessed or this can be a long persistent and targeted attack spear phishing in most cases on the political party In either case I am certain there is more data in the hands of the hackers than just account access that might be released in due course of time Modi told IANSThe only two parties responsible for the security of a social media account are the social media provider in this case Twitter and the owner of the account As these are just two accounts that have been compromised and misused it is safe to assume that the exploited vulnerability was not present on the side of Twitter Modi addedThere are several infamous groups busy working day and night to hack into social media accounts be it Legion that claimed to have hacked into Rahul Gandhis Twitter account or OurMine that compromised the Twitter accounts of Zuckerberg Dorsey Pichai and othersThe most popular website among hackers is LeakedSourcecom which compiles the databases for publicly available hacks of usernames passwords and email addresses from every major website security breach over the last few years say media reportsFor a country like India that is transitioning to a digital era experts feel there is a need for stronger cyber laws to minimise such cyberbullying risksIndia still does not have a dedicated legislation on cyber security or bullying when it comes to social media platforms The country given its vision of becoming an IT superpower needs to have a dedicated cyber security law on this at the earliest Pavan Duggal one of the nations top cyber law experts and a senior Supreme Court advocate told IANSThe Information Technology Act 2000 was amended in 2008 By virtue of the 2008 amendments certain cosmetic changes concerning cyber security were made to the Information Technology Act 2000These amendments are not sufficient and adequate in todays scenario Further the cyber security breach ecosystem ground realities are distinctly different in 2016 as compared to 2008 As such there is a distinct need for India to beef up its legal frameworks on cyber security and cyber bullying Duggal addedPeople need to adopt various cyber hygiene methodologies in order to avoid online data stealingHaving in place an updated antivirus software on your computer system is a critical component There are several encrypted data services available which can be used abroad Company executives should only access HTTPs sites being secure sites Duggal suggestedIf youre accessing something sensitive on public WiFi try to do it on an SSL Secure Socket Layer encrypted websites The HTTPs browser extension can reduce the risk by redirecting you to an encrypted page when available Mishra explainedTurn off filecomputernetwork sharing and avoid using specific websites where theres a chance that cyber criminals could capture your identity passwords or personal informationMake all new PIN and account passwords different and difficult to guess Include upper and lower case letters numbers and symbols to make passwords harder to crack online suggested Sunil Sharma Vice PresidentSales and Operations India amp SAARC Sophos a global leader in network and endpoint security