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Twitter Substitute: Mastodon is it Secure?

Mastodon, a Twitter substitute, has gained popularity as the Musk era gets underway, however, is it more private and safe than Twitter?

Mastodon resembles a hybrid of Twitter and Discord. It is a microblogging network, like Twitter. It hosts hundreds of separate servers, unlike Twitter, and is decentralized.

Mastodon is self-funded and dependent on member donations and the administrator's goodwill. The servers are often run by volunteer moderators and focused on a single topic, such as politics or technology. Each has unique guidelines and a sign-up procedure. Users do not require special access to view posts and interact with others because users can join as many as they like and follow people across different sections.

People who switch from Twitter to Mastodon make the first error of thinking that it will be a resembling alternative. 

Mastodon Security

Forbes spoke to numerous specialists who addressed security issues with Mastodon's architecture and potential programming flaws in an article published this week. 

"Mastodon isn't the cure many people abandoning Twitter may think it is," cautioned Cybrary's senior director of threat intelligence, David Maynor.

For your Mastodon account, enable two-factor authentication. Mastodon's design may have flaws, according to Melissa Bischoping, director and endpoint security research specialist at Tanium. The website is divided up into 'instances,' or separately maintained sections. In addition to developing the rules for each 'instance,' administrators are also in charge of the site's infrastructure and software.

User verification is another function that falls under the general security category. Anybody can sign up at any of Mastodon's several distinct instances, independent servers managed by various admins because you are not registered and pretend to be you. 

Finally, numerous instances have been created solely for the goal of testing security and reporting flaws and vulnerabilities, allowing the ethical hacking and bug-hunting community to continue to participate and enhance the security of the platform as it becomes more widely used.


CEO of Koo App Denies the Allegations of Data Breach by French Hacker

 

Koo, a home-grown microblogging platform has come under the scanner after a French ethical hacker known by the moniker Elliot Alderson on Twitter uncovered the security loopholes in the Koo app. Cybercriminals can exploit the vulnerabilities in the app to retrieve personally identifiable information such as e-mail ID, date of birth, name, marital status, gender, and more.

Several Union ministers, politicians, and film actors are switching to the micro-blogging platform Koo but this leak has raised serious concerns regarding the safety of private information of the users. “You asked so I did it. I spent 30 min on this new Koo app. The app is leaking the personal data of users: email, dob, name, marital status, gender…” Alderson tweeted with emended screenshots of the data he was able to access.

Aprameya Radhakrishna, Koo’s co-founder, and CEO responded that the app is fully secured and data visible is something that the users have voluntarily shown on the profile. Aprameya explained on Twitter that “some news about data leaking being spoken about unnecessarily. Please read this: The data visible is something that the user has voluntarily shown on their profile of Koo. It cannot be termed a data leak. If you visit a user profile you can see it anyway”.

Alderson countered the tweet by sharing a screenshot of an IAS officer on Koo, he claimed he could gain access to the data of an IAS officer without it being visible on the profile page and he tagged Aprameya in his tweet.

Aprameya replied to the tweet – “@fs0c131y (Elliot Alderson) We’re attempting to do something for our country, India. All help is appreciated. If you want to help out in this journey of ours please write to me at ar@kooapp.com and we can take a look at all the feedback you have. Thanks!” 

The popularity of the Koo app is increasing with each passing day and has surpassed over 3 million downloads on both Google Play and the Apple app store. Observably, the app is seen as the alternative to Twitter and many prominent personalities have moved to the Koo app.