{"id":14231,"date":"2019-02-13T20:50:11","date_gmt":"2019-02-13T20:50:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/rsoftsolution.com\/blog\/manipulating-an-indian-politicians-tweets-is-worryingly-easy-to-do.html"},"modified":"2019-02-13T20:50:11","modified_gmt":"2019-02-13T20:50:11","slug":"manipulating-an-indian-politicians-tweets-is-worryingly-easy-to-do","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rbsitsoftwaresolution.in\/blog\/manipulating-an-indian-politicians-tweets-is-worryingly-easy-to-do.html","title":{"rendered":"Manipulating an Indian politician\u2019s tweets is worryingly easy to do"},"content":{"rendered":"

Here\u2019s a concerning story from India, where the upcoming election is putting the use of social media in the spotlight.<\/p>\n

While the Indian government is putting Facebook, <\/a> Google <\/a> and other companies under pressure to prevent their digital platforms from being used for election manipulation<\/a>, a journalist has demonstrated just how easy it is to control the social media messages published by government ministers.<\/p>\n

Pon Radhakrishnan,\u00a0India\u2019s minister of state for finance and shipping, published a series of puzzling tweets today after\u00a0Pratik Sinha<\/a>, a\u00a0co-founder of fact-checking website Alt News<\/a>, accessed a Google document of prepared statements and tinkered with the content.<\/p>\n

Among the statements tweeted out,\u00a0Radhakrishnan said Prime Minister Modi\u2019s government had failed the middle classes and had not made development on improving the country\u2019s general welfare. Sinha\u2019s edits also led to the official BJP Assam Pradesh account proclaiming that the prime minister had destroyed all villages and made women slaves to cooking.<\/p>\n

\n

And then you can get a Union Minister to tweet that “working for the middle class is low on the agenda of Modi Govt” <\/p>\n

CC @PonnaarrBJP<\/a> <\/p>\n

2\/n pic.twitter.com\/79WH2r73C5<\/a><\/p>\n

\u2014 Pratik Sinha (@free_thinker) February 13, 2019<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\n

These are the opposite of the partisan messages that the accounts intended to send.<\/p>\n

The messages were held in an unlocked Google document that contained a range of tweets compiled for the Twitter <\/a> accounts. Sinha managed to access the document and doctor the messages into improbable statements \u2014 which he has done before \u2014 in order to show the shocking lack of security and processes behind the social media content.<\/p>\n

\n

How do you get a Union Minister to tweet what you want? Well, you go and edit the trending document made by BJP IT cell, and then you control what they tweet. Thread.<\/p>\n

Here’s the video of this morning when their trending document got automagically updated \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n

1\/n pic.twitter.com\/6DLwDPg2CV<\/a><\/p>\n

\u2014 Pratik Sinha (@free_thinker) February 13, 2019<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\n

Sinha said he made the edits \u201cto demonstrate how dangerous this is from the security standpoint for this country.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI had fun but it could have disastrous consequences,\u201d he told TechCrunch in a phone interview. \u201cThis is a massive security issue from the point of view of a democracy.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sinha said he was able to access the document \u2014 which was not restricted or locked to prevent changes \u2014 through a WhatsApp <\/a> group that is run by members of the party. Declining to give specifics, he said he had managed to infiltrate the group and thus gain access to a flow of party and government information and, even more surprisingly, get right into the\u00a0documents and edit them.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s equally as stunning is that, even with the message twisted 180 degrees, their content didn\u2019t raise an alarm. The\u00a0tweets were still loaded and published without any realization. It was only after\u00a0Sinha went public with the results that Radhakrishnan and\u00a0BJP Assam Pradesh account\u00a0begin to delete them.<\/p>\n

The Indian government is rightly grilling Facebook and Google to prevent its platform being abused around the election, as evidence suggested happened in the U.S. presidential election and the U.K.\u2019s Brexit vote, but members of the government themselves should reflect on the security of their own systems, too. It would be too easy for these poor\u00a0systems to be exploited.<\/p>\n

Article source: http:\/\/feedproxy.google.com\/~r\/techcrunch\/social\/~3\/Ri0Pf-NOtkM\/<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Here\u2019s a concerning story from India, where the upcoming election is putting the use of social media in the spotlight. While the Indian government is putting Facebook, Google and other <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3],"tags":[10,7,14,15,6,12,11],"class_list":["post-14231","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-latest-update","tag-computer-news","tag-downloads","tag-microsoft-download-news","tag-networking-updates","tag-technology-update","tag-wordpress-plugin-download","tag-wordpress-theme-download"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t