A Fatal Bug Of Twitter Matches Nearly 20 Million Phone Numbers With Users

Anil Singh - Dec 25, 2019

An expert claimed that he could access the list of 17 million users’ phone numbers basing on a flaw in Twitter’s Android app.

Recently, Twitter users have come under fire due to another mistake with this social network platform’s security. According to TechCrunch, an expert namely Ibrahim Balic claimed that he could access the list of 17 million users’ phone numbers basing on a flaw in Twitter’s Android app. The thing is Twitter’s contact function restricts the phone numbers lists in subsequent order; however, Balic realized they could be generated, randomized then used to find the matched users by the Twitter search engine. Using this way, TechCrunch also found the numbers of a senior politician from Israel.

Dims — Balic could access the list of 17 million users’ phone numbers basing on a flaw in Twitter’s Android app.

The expert did not choose to report the problem to Twitter but directly revealed it to some users. As revenge, he was blocked on December 20th for an unpublicized reason. Twitter has not said anything about this issue.

2019 has not been a safe year for Twitter. In addition, its recently discovered faults involved unintentional location data leak and users’ numbers exploitation for advertisement companies. Although the damage may seem minor, it will become a huge setback for Twitter in its effort of getting the users’ belief back.

Adb5d3ff856b7c35257a — This incident raises a slew of backlashes from Twitter users.

In response to tons of questions from the Press and the users, Aly Pavela, who is now the spokesperson of Twitter, stated that the company had received the report as a serious and potentially controversial issue. She also mentioned the act of blocking that security researcher’s account for the reason of protecting other users’ information.

Obviously, the Twitter spokeswoman claimed that they would not feel insecure by Balic’s accident revelation. She also accused him of making hundreds of fake accounts in more than 50 active Android sessions, which makes Twitter take a lot of time and energy to eliminate those messes.