Twitter shuts down SMS vulnerability once its CEO gets affected

Twitter has shut down functionality which allowed users to text SMS messages to send a tweet. The move comes after CEO Jac Dorsey’s account was attacked last week and used as a platform to spread racist and white nationalist sentiment. The firm announced the move this week as one of the countermeasures it was taking to protect accounts. It is worth noting that this had been pointed out by security firms before, but the social network only appeared to take notice after personal embarrassment was caused to its CEO.

We’re taking this step because of vulnerabilities that need to be addressed by mobile carriers and our reliance on having a linked phone number for two-factor authentication (we’re working on improving this).

— Support (@Support) September 4, 2019

While Twitter has shut it down in almost all markets, the firm has reenabled the feature for markets which rely on it, however. Perhaps due to slow internet speeds or low 4G proliferation. As the saying goes, you are only as strong as your weakest link, and Twitter hopes to harden this link as long as it can.

We’ve now turned this feature back on for a few locations that depend on SMS to Tweet. It remains turned off for the rest of the world.

— Support (@Support) September 5, 2019