{"id":3103,"date":"2017-01-26T01:46:03","date_gmt":"2017-01-26T01:46:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rsoftsolution.com\/blog\/the-risky-business-of-trump-the-twittering-president.html"},"modified":"2017-01-26T01:46:03","modified_gmt":"2017-01-26T01:46:03","slug":"the-risky-business-of-trump-the-twittering-president","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rbsitsoftwaresolution.in\/blog\/the-risky-business-of-trump-the-twittering-president.html","title":{"rendered":"The risky business of Trump the twittering president"},"content":{"rendered":"

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US President Donald Trump is unprecedented in a lot more\u00a0ways than could\u00a0be listed in\u00a0140-characters.<\/p>\n

But his prolific and unpredictable use of Twitter is one difference that marks him\u00a0out from presidents past \u2014 a long term habit, via\u00a0his personal Twitter account<\/a>, which\u00a0he shows few<\/a>\u00a0if any signs of moderating, either in volume or style, since taking up office as the Leader of the Free World at the end of last week\u2026<\/p>\n

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If Chicago doesn’t fix the horrible “carnage” going on, 228 shootings in 2017 with 42 killings (up 24% from 2016), I will send in the Feds!<\/p>\n

\u2014 Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 25, 2017<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

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Nor has\u00a0he suspended use of his\u00a0@realDonaldTrump<\/a>\u00a0Twitter account now that he also\u00a0controls the official\u00a0@POTUS<\/a>\u00a0account, with\u00a0its 14.3M followers (vs Trump\u2019s 21.9M). This is in stark contrast\u00a0to President Obama who communicated solely\u00a0via\u00a0the official presidential Twitter\u00a0channel during his eight years in office \u2014\u00a0returning to his personal Twitter account <\/a>only after he\u2019d left office.<\/p>\n

No such clearly delineated communication lines for President Trump.\u00a0Not only is Trump continuing to\u00a0tweet from both accounts (at least for now), he\u2019s been using @POTUS to RT\u00a0tweets from his\u00a0personal Twitter account.<\/p>\n

So even though the president is not personally writing all @POTUS tweets himself \u2014 Dan Scavino, his director of social media, is named as the writer there (and the few @POTUS tweets\u00a0Trump types himself\u00a0are signed \u201cDJT\u201d) \u2014 a steady stream of @realDonaldTrump\u2019s tone is\u00a0being\u00a0injected into the official presidential Twitter feed via liberal use of the\u00a0RT button\u2026<\/p>\n

\"Trump<\/a><\/p>\n

Having a sitting U.S. president who is both so active and so unrestrained in his use of the 140-character social media platform \u2014 including using it as a tool to apply pressure to further his policy agenda through what basically amounts to\u00a0cyber bully tactics \u2014 suggests a series of\u00a0heightened risks.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s\u00a0take a look at a few of them.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Hacking<\/strong><\/h4>\n

There\u2019s no doubt that Trump\u2019s Twitter accounts are going to be a massive magnet for hackers.<\/p>\n

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so.. take an attackers position for a moment.
What could you do with ONE TWEET as @POTUS<\/a>?
\u2026 and maybe.. a single flash 0day?<\/p>\n

\u2014 Dan Tentler (@Viss) January 20, 2017<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

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And while the @POTUS account itself may prove\u00a0challenging\u00a0for attackers to get into, given (well, you\u2019d hope\u2026 )\u00a0a continuity in the prior\u00a0security procedures that ensured president Obama\u2019s @POTUS account was not\u00a0hacked (although failures of\u00a0compliance by Trump and his staff<\/a>\u00a0is the potential weak link here), there\u2019s still the lure of Trump\u2019s\u00a0personal Twitter \u2014 which he\u00a0continues to use for policy announcements and presidential messaging.<\/p>\n

The president\u2019s\u00a0personal\u00a0grasp of cybersecurity is clearly\u00a0questionable <\/a>\u2014 a\u00a0poor reputation that has\u00a0not been improved in recent days by his\u00a0appointment of Rudy Giuliani as an advisor<\/a>\u00a0in such a crucial area, either<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cTrump\u2019s Twitter use seems reckless, but I\u2019d be surprised if the @POTUS account gets hacked,\u201d says Mikko Hypponen, CSO of cybersecurity firm F-Secure, when asked for his thoughts on the hacking risk. \u201cThe Secret Service and other agencies tasked to secure him are well aware of the risks and are professionals in their work.\u201d<\/p>\n

Whether agency professionals will be\u00a0able to compensate for a lack of seasoned\u00a0cybersecurity expertise in the Trump camp\u00a0remains the salient\u00a0question \u2014 with\u00a0at least one hacker suggesting things aren\u2019t off to a promising start\u2026<\/p>\n

But even if the very high value target @POTUS account gets properly locked down stat that still leaves Trump\u2019s\u00a0personal Twitter as a potentially softer target, especially if\u00a0multiple people have access to it (as appears to be the case) \u2014 offering\u00a0hackers a secondary\u00a0channel with which they could still wreak plenty of havoc.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s been Twitter-hacked before<\/a>, it could happen again,\u201d argues\u00a0security commentator Graham Cluley. \u201cThe risk, I would imagine, is two-fold: his account is now a much bigger target than it was before and he\u2019s sharing access with other people. Hopefully he has Login Verifications enabled to provide some form of 2SV but some organizations which have multiple users using the same account struggle with that.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut even if that is in place, there\u2019s the risk that one of his staff\u2019s computers could be compromised and a hacker could potentially use that to post to his Twitter.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIf only we had some way of reading a tweet and knowing that only Donald Trump could have said such a thing,\u201d adds Cluley \u2014 highlighting one of the major attractions for hackers here: aka the chance to tweet almost anything from Trump\u2019s account (typos included!) and still have a good chance that\u00a0people believe it\u2019s genuine, thanks to Trump\u2019s demonstrably unorthodox communications\u00a0style.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Conflicts of interest<\/strong><\/h4>\n

Trump is like no U.S. president before him in terms of the sprawling business empire<\/a> he remains\u00a0connected\u00a0to \u2014 having only handed control of his businesses to his older sons, rather than (as was urged) putting these\u00a0assets\u00a0into a blind trust.<\/p>\n

Combine this\u00a0sprawling network of commercial links with Trump\u2019s\u00a0habit of using Twitter as a\u00a0promotional tool and it\u2019s not hard to see how his prolific tweet\u00a0habit<\/a> could exacerbate potential legal liabilities related to\u00a0conflicts of interest.<\/p>\n

Whether that\u2019s by Trump explicitly promoting businesses he has links to, e.g. the eponymous \u201cTrump Tower\u201d in the above tweet \u2014 a mixed-use skyscraper he owns that not only\u00a0houses his New York home and office, but various of his own businesses, such as the Trump Grill restaurant, the Trump Store, the Trump Bar\u2026 Or even implicitly, via\u00a0tweets that are geotagged \u201cat Trump Tower\u201d \u2014 as some of @realDonaldTrump\u2019s have been<\/a>.<\/p>\n