Hive Social, one of the microblogging platforms that gained popularity after Elon Musk acquired Twitter, has gone offline while it fixes a number of serious security issues.
In the days after Elon Musk acquired Twitter, many users fled to alternative microblogging platforms like Mastodon and Hive, amassing millions of new users virtually overnight. But with the increase in popularity came also greater scrutiny.
The German research group Zerforschung recently uncovered a number of serious vulnerabilities in Hive that would allow cybercriminals to do massive damage to the platform: they could access all your data, including private posts and messages, shared media, and even deleted direct messages. In addition, e-mail addresses and telephone numbers used for identification (opens in a new tab) you can also access verification.
Public
In a blog post published earlier this week, the group said it had privately notified Hive of its findings, and received confirmation of the resolution of the issues soon after.
However, due to a major misunderstanding, Hive was still working on a fix when Zerforschung went public with its findings, urging users to stay away from Hive and use a different network.
In response, Hive shut down all its operations completely until the issues were resolved. Since then, Hive has released one update, but more are expected soon.
While researchers may recommend Mastodon instead, it’s safe to say that this platform has also had its share of problems. Last week, researchers discovered three separate vulnerabilities that could allow cybercriminals to manipulate stored data and in some cases even download it.
When news of the vulnerabilities surfaced, security experts warned Mastodon users not to share data that everyone would know about.
By: TechCrunch (opens in a new tab)