US Government: Serving up whale for over 100 years

Interesting…  If you haven’t seen the coverage, the FTC forced Twitter to update its information security program after a slew of information security issues including password problems, breaches, and fraudulent claims about the security of the site (in other words,  claimed protection measures that just weren’t implemented the way they said they were).  Check it out:

In one case, attackers were able to exert administrative control over the site, which enabled them to deliver bogus tweets pretending to originate from the accounts of a number of well-known members, including President Obama.

Hah!  It’s never any good when you let shady characters post content as the president of the US.  Semi-related, but in epic bad timing, a researcher demonstrated XSS issues in the platform… that’s not good.

Anyway, this is interesting to me in that the FTC should choose to exercise its muscle for cleaning up Twitter. I mean, they’ve gone after others in the past – but this is one of the relatively few in that there wasn’t actual cash at stake.  So… props to the FTC for taking the situation seriously.  No question that there were some serious issues and failure to uphold their security claims.  But I’m surprised at how forward thinking this is of them – most regulatory bodies are fairly slow to react.  Good job, FTC.

So, next stop: farmville?  I hear it’s a seedy underbelly of animal cruelty and lax agricultural safeguards…