Twitter: The Anti-Social Media Giant?
Social media has been heralded as a way for communication to flow freely from one user to another. It has given a voice to many and helped spread ideas and conversations worldwide. It also has created a thriving new market for data mining and organizations snooping in on your private information.
Twitter has taken a stand against any party trying to snoop around its servers and its users' information. The company has done so by implementing its perfect forward secrecy (PFS) plan for its mobile and web platforms. While many might argue that PFS is vital in keeping out the prying eyes of the NSA, it’s also pivotal in fighting off any organization hoping to eavesdrop on the communications between users and servers.
As computer technology advances, so does the opportunity for innovations to lend themselves to breaking encrypted data. Perfect forward secrecy aims to eliminate that opportunity.
As Twitter currently operates, information is encrypted, and a secret key to the encryption is located somewhere on the server. Information could be recorded in its encrypted form and then broken at a later date—should the secret key on the server be found.
Perfect forward secrecy creates the encryption of data from two separate keys that only live on the server for a short period of time making it nearly impossible for the encryption on the data to be broken—even if the secret key on the server is found.
You may be asking yourself: Were my conversations and information at risk before PFS? If you were posting information to the world, as some tweeters do, then yes—and it still will be! What this policy aims to do is tighten the security on stored personal information and direct messaging.
However, Twitter doesn't stop there. Twitter security engineer Jacob Hoffman-Andrews mentioned in a statement on behalf of the company that Twitter hopes other popular sites follow suit and ramp up their own security measures. Hoffman-Andrews continued by saying that Twitter encourages other companies to make HTTPS ramparted with HSTS, certificate pinning, and forward secrecy the new standard for Internet security.
As the social media juggernaut Twitter takes proactive steps to keep private conversations private, it may be fair to say that the most sociable person in the room just taught us all a lesson in the importance of Internet security and keeping to ourselves.
Does your company’s website implement perfect forward secrecy? Do you think websites your company frequents are using appropriate security regarding your company's information? Tell us in the comments below.
