Following a devastating Twitter hack on Wednesday, that resulted in a hacker being able to infiltrate the service and gain access to several high-profile Twitter accounts to send fraudulent Bitcoin requests, lawmakers on both sides are pulling Twitter security apart. Bitcoin, surprisingly, has been spared from criticism this time.
Since its inception, Bitcoin has often been linked to illicit activities and its potential role in deceiving the cybersecurity experts due to its anonymity. It found one of its biggest critics in President Trump when he affirmed last year that Bitcoin would never be able to replace the U.S. dollar monopoly.
Thus, when Bitcoin scammers targeted some of the most noteworthy figures in the U.S., including Elon Musk, Bill Gates, Barack Obama, and former vice president and current presidential candidate for 2020, Joe Biden, it was assumed that Bitcoin would, once again, come under fire.
Twitter’s security system questioned over Twitter hack
However, it appears that the US lawmakers are emphasizing more on scrutinizing Twitter’s undefended security system rather than condemning Bitcoin. Following the Twitter hack, the social media giant struggled to tackle the issue, and cybersecurity experts claim that the problem is somewhat ingrained deep into the Twitter system, meaning that the resolution might not be as easy as we think.
Oregon Democrat, Sen. Ron Wyden, lambasted Twitter saying that the Jack Dorsey led networking site hasn’t lived up to its promises.
I feel that I have been let down by Jack Dorsey and his team. I met Dorsey back in 2018 in a one-to-one session where I was assured of Twitter’s end-to-end encryption of direct messages. It’s been two years since that conversation, and apparently, nothing has changed. The Twitter hack could have had much more lasting and devastating consequences.
Sen. Josh Hawley, who is also a famous tech critic, said to Twitter CEO that this kind of negligence is unforgivable. The Twitter hack was not only the result of a synchronized form of attacks but also a successful strike on Twitter’s security framework, which gets easily compromised frequently, he complained.
Imagine the damages if President Trump’s account was attacked, and if they were able to steal invaluable user data. It would have been an unfathomable catastrophe.
So, while Twitter was getting pulled apart by American politicians who expressed their frustration over frequent security lapses and its failure to protect user accounts, the pro-crypto community in Washington D.C. seemed to be unperturbed.
Bitcoin remains in the clear, for now
Neeraj Agrawal of Coin Center said that Twitter, and only Twitter, must be blamed for this debacle. Not Bitcoin.
Bitcoin’s framework was not compromised, that comes from the fact that the attackers were only able to purloin a meager amount of $100,000. If anything, the Twitter hack shows how much destruction centralized servers can cause.
Kristin Smith from Blockchain Association refers to a tweet from Rep. Tom Emmer, who specifically blames a centralized framework for the Twitter hack and that it is unlikely that lawmakers and regulators would use this opportunity to put Bitcoin and blockchain in a bad light.
It’s a tricky situation. A hack this significant would make it seem to common people and amateur investors that Bitcoin is to be blamed for making this happen. But that isn’t the case in reality. For someone who has been in the industry and who knows how policymakers and regulators think, Bitcoin is not responsible for this attack.
Meanwhile, on a regional level, the New York Governor has demanded a full probe into the Twitter hack and urged other social networking giants to look at this incident as an opportunity to shore up their back-end defense systems. If not strengthened, hackers can very well cause nationwide disruption of services, he warned.
