Obama announced several bills on cybersecurity Monday—but had his thunder somewhat stolen by hackers, identifying themselves as ISIS members, who took over CENTCOM’s Twitter and Youtube.
Speaking at the Federal Trade Commission, Obama denounced fraud and credit card theft, saying, “This is a direct threat to the economic security of American families, and we’ve got to stop it.”
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He proposed the Personal Data Notification and Protection Act, which would mandate companies notify customers within 30 days if their information has been compromised and replace a “patchwork” of similar state laws.
The Student Data Privacy Act, meanwhile, would ban companies from targeting students with information gleaned from school technology (lest companies “market to our children” –the horror!)
He also announced a forthcoming bill, the Consumer Privacy Bill of Rights—for “some basic, baseline” protections for consumer data.
Unfortunately, while Obama was speaking, CENTCOM’s Twitter account was busy tweeting things like this: “AMERICAN SOLDIERS, WE ARE COMING, WATCH YOUR BACK. ISIS.”
The account was eventually suspended forty minutes later, but not before sending multiple messages, including “ISIS is already here, we are in your PCs, in each military base. With Allah’s permission we are in CENTCOM now. We won’t stop! We know everything about you, your wives and children. U.S. soldiers! We’re watching you!”
“This is something we are obviously looking into and something we take seriously,” White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said of the hack, adding that there is a “pretty significant difference” between “a large data breach and the hacking of a Twitter account.”
Obama will also be speaking Tuesday at the Department of Homeland Security about cyberattacks.
Hopefully all government social media accounts can manage to keep watch of their passwords for the occasion.
Watch clips of the president’s speech below, via the AP:
