BYOD #3: Twitter bugs and media gagging
This week’s round-up of digital security news and investigative journalism.
ANCIR’s weekly post offering interesting — or amusing — digital security news from around the world, and tips for newsrooms, journalists and sources on the latest security measures.
1. Change your Twitter password now
Twitter is urging users to change their passwords immediately after discovering an internal bug that stored passwords in plain text in an internal system.
“Due to a bug, passwords were written to an internal log before completing the hashing process. We found this error ourselves, removed the passwords, and are implementing plans to prevent this bug from happening again,” said Twitter’s chief technology officer, Parag Agrawal, in a blogpost.
No data breach was detected and Twitter has apologised for its error.
2. Media Freedom
On Thursday, we celebrated World Press Freedom Day. There have been worrying reports about journalists and media workers’ safety across the world, with the CPJ calling 2017 the worst year for press freedom to date. Read our full analysis here and see our list of handy tools to keep your data safe.
3. Uganda orders blocking of news websites
The Uganda Communication’s Commission (UCC) has ordered internet service providers in the country to block unauthorised news websites. According to the Techweez, a letter from the commision regarding the directive stated that there are only two authorised media outlets out of 14 listed. The directive is not the first of such events. During the last presidential elections, Uganda banned the use of social media and soon after, planned to tax social media users daily.
BYOD (Bring Your Own Device / Bring Your Own Data) refers to owning your data and digital property, and keeping it secure.
Do you need help with digital security? ANCIR is offering a helpline, technical resources, and sharing of best practices with newsrooms and human rights activists free of charge. If you’d like to get access to these and more, sign up here to be considered for our digital security support.
The African Network of Centers for Investigative Reporting (ANCIR) is an association of the continent’s best investigative newsrooms, ranging from large traditional media to small specialist units.
ANCIR works to strengthen African investigative journalism by improving the techniques, expertise, the tools used in muckraking newsrooms. This includes providing member newsrooms with the world’s best encryption and semantic analysis technologies, to forensic research support (through the Investigative Dashboard), legal services, and seed grants for cross-border collaboration.
ANCIR is incubated by and receives technical support from Code for Africa.
