[ad_1]
SVT Nyheter has been in contact with several employees and former employees of Swedish Radio who say they had access to Swedish Radio accounts on Twitter long after they left. Employees can also easily access a list of passwords for several different accounts.
The TV4 journalist Emil Hellerud is one of those who reacted:
“Hacking @sr_ekot a combined problem of high staff turnover and poor IT security hygiene stands out on Twitter. For 1-2 years after quitting smoking @Sweden radio I still had access to Facebook accounts that I shouldn’t have, ”he writes on Twitter.
I don’t want to comment
SVT Nyheter has asked both Swedish radio’s digital director Robert Brännström and press director Claes Bertilson about IT security, but neither of them want to comment on IT security on Swedish radio.
– We never comment on how we handle our security work, says Claes Bertilson.
We have information that former employees have had access to accounts long after they left and that there is a list of passwords that can be easily accessed, is there nothing you want to comment on?
– No, I have no comment on that. I didn’t hear that statement until you said it.
However, the experts SVT Nyheter spoke to take what happened seriously. Fredrik Blix, PhD in Cybersecurity at Stockholm University, believes that the security breach can be used to spread misinformation that can have dire consequences.
– You should be able to go to public service in a crisis, and if someone posts a credible message on Ekot’s Twitter about, for example, a pandemic, it could lead people to panic.
“You need more secure authentication”
The attack could have taken place in a number of different ways, according to Fredrik Blix. It may be that someone has managed to guess the SR password or that it has somehow been revealed, but it can also be a more “sophisticated” trick.
– I don’t know what your attitude is about digital security at SR. I assume they have multi-step authentication on their accounts. But this is an indication to be careful.
Gazmend Huskaj, a PhD student in cyber operations at the Swedish National Defense College, says what happened is “very serious.”
– Suppose we have a choice and before the elections we see this type of phenomenon. You don’t need that much to alter confidence in the entire election outcome, so you could see it in a larger context.
[ad_2]
