Twitter is having a security nightmare of a year and this latest one is about Android phones, albeit the older ones.
Twitter has today sent a notice to users about a potential security risk that targeted DMs on Android.
“We recently discovered a security issue in Android OS 8 and 9 that could have impacted you. Our understanding is 96% of people sing Twitter for Android already have an Android security patch installed that protects them from this vulnerability. Since you are no longer using a vulnerable version of Twitter for Android on this device, you don’t need to do anything, but we felt it was important to let you know,” it says on the notice.
This means that 4% of Twitter users that use the Android app are affected by this bug. A Twitter spokesperson told TechCrunch that the bug was reported by a security researcher a few weeks ago and it was fixed.
The bug could have allowed a malicious app running on the same device to siphon off direct messages stored in the Twitter app by bypassing Android’s in-built data permissions.
Twitter says that they have no evidence that it was exploited and some of you will be asked to update your Twitter app.
This sort of security flaws shows how important it is to regularly update your phone and especially those critical monthly fixes we get over the air.
This security issue comes right after Twitter suffered a serious security flaw that affected popular verified accounts like Elon Musk and Bill Gates in a cryptocurrency scam. That security issue was major since it involved social engineering to hack into Twitter’s backend to access these accounts.
