Twitter adds a new security layer to beef up encryption
Called forward secrecy, the new layer provides privacy via secure Sockets Layer-based connections (SSL), making it difficult for hackers to crack the encryption keys.
Twitter has ramped up its security technology in order to make it difficult to spy on its users. The social networking company has added a new layer of protection, which it calls ‘forward secrecy’, to its traditional HTTPS encryption.
“On top of the usual confidentiality and integrity properties of HTTPS, forward secrecy adds a new property. If an adversary is currently recording all Twitter users’ encrypted traffic, and they later crack or steal Twitter’s private keys, they should not be able to use those keys to decrypt the recorded traffic,” says Twitter in a blog post.
Learn more about Twitter’s forward secrecy tool here.
Twitter’s boost to security technologies comes at a time when the Internet companies are under immense pressure to provide users’ information to the government bodies.
Following revelations made by Edward Snowden about widespread, classified US government surveillance programs, companies such as Facebook, Google, Microsoft and Yahoo have called for more transparency on the web and have come up with their own reports on data requests by governments across the world.
Of late the companies have been working to beef up the encryption to thwart spying. Microsoft recently announced Office 365 Message Encryption service that will enable users send encrypted emails to anyone outside their company. The service will be rolled out in Q1, 2014.
Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer has also announced plans to have all of its internal server traffic encrypted by the end of Q1 2014. Yahoo also stated that they will also be offering a chance to users to encrypt all of the traffic that they send to or from the service using HTTPS.
Source: Twitter