Hackers easily swept up more than 90,000 user emails from people who signed up for the newly-launched GETTR social media site set up by former Trump advisor and surreptitious abortion supporter Jason Miller, Vice News reports.
Vice’s Motherboard tech column obtained a spreadsheet that contained the email addresses, user names, birthdates, bios and locations for more than 90,000 people registered on the site. Motherboard then contacted some of the email address users to confirm that they had indeed set up accounts on GETTR. For other email addresses, the news organization tried setting up new GETTR accounts, but got the message that an account already existed using that email address.
“When threat actors are able to extract sensitive information due to neglectful API implementations, the consequence is equivalent to a data breach and should be handled accordingly by the firm and to be examined by regulators,” Alon Gal, the co-founder and CTO of cybersecurity firm Hudson Rock, told Motherboard in an online chat.
Gal argues that the problem should be called a “data breach,” not a hack, because the data was easily accessible through frameworks set up by GETTR to use their APIs, or application programming interface, that allow other developers to utilize the content of the website.
GETTR has been the target of widespread mockery and assaults from people against the agenda of Trump-aligned politicians and groups. It saw a rush of new accounts aligned with Sonic the Hedgehog porn fans, and a number of accounts falsely associated with conservative personalities.