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TikTok has apologized for its employees hacking into the accounts of at least two journalists and several other users’ accounts after they tried to figure out where a leak had come from.
Financial Times reporter Cristina Criddle and former Buzzfeed writer Emily Baker-White, who now works for Forbes, had their TikTok accounts hacked by four ByteDance employees. ByteDance is the parent company of TikTok.
White identified herself on her Twitter account and wrote: ‘ByteDance used TikTok to track my location, and the locations of two of my colleagues, to try to find our sources. We reported on this in October, but kept things vague to protect sources. Today ByteDance admitted it…’
The financial times identified Criddle as the victim in a report, released Thursday.
Forbes also claimed Richard Nieva and Katharine Schwab were also tracked, however internal emails at TikTok only admit to tracking one Financial Times reporter (Criddle) and one Buzzfeed reporter (White), but investigated a ‘small number of people connected to reporters.’
The four ByteDance employees, two in the US and two in China, were trying to find out where the internal conversations were leaked by tracing the IP addresses of Criddle and White to see if they had been in close proximity to any ByteDance employees.
Financial Times reporter Cristina Criddle and former Buzzfeed writer Emily Baker-White (pictured), who now works for Forbes, had their TikTok accounts hacked by four ByteDance employees. White has reported extensively on the company for both Buzzfeed and Forbes. Her employees began investigating her after she published a Buzzfeed article in June about accessing US data in China through the app.
Criddle has also written several articles about the company, including an article claiming that dozens of TikTok employees were leaving the London office because of toxic working conditions and because the so-called “kill list” of colleagues who, according to the The company reportedly wanted to oust.
Forbes also claimed that Richard Nieva and Katharine Schwab were also tracked, however internal emails at TikTok only admit to tracking one Financial Times reporter (Criddle) and one Buzzfeed reporter (White), but investigated a “small number of people connected to reporters
The employees were part of a team the company has that monitors employee behavior, but they were unable to find any connections to the journalists and their co-workers. They have since been laid off and the team no longer has access to US data.
ByteDance’s chief internal auditor, Chris Lepitak, head of the team that hacked into the journalists’ accounts, was also fired and China-based executive Song Ye, whom Lepitak reported to, has since resigned, according to Forbes.
ByteDance CEO Rubo Liang disclosed the findings in an email to employees, reportedly telling them, “I was deeply disappointed when I was notified of the situation… and I’m sure you feel the same way.” The public trust that we have invested great effort in building will be significantly undermined by the misconduct of some individuals.”
TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew also addressed the situation, telling employees, “We take data security incredibly seriously” and that the company has been hard at work for over a year to create a new data security program. US-based data warehouse to show their “testament to that commitment.” ,’ according to The New York Times.
The investigation began after White published an article about BuzzFeed News in June 2022, where he overheard 80 leaked internal TikTok meetings indicating that US user data was being repeatedly accessed from China.
Later he also published an article in Forbes in October 2022, alleging that ByteDance planned to use TikTok to monitor the location of specific US citizens.
Criddle has also written several articles about the company, including an article claiming that dozens of TikTok employees were leaving the London office because of toxic working conditions and because the so-called “kill list” of colleagues who, according to the The company reportedly wanted to oust.
ByteDance CEO Rubo Liang disclosed the findings in an email to employees, reportedly telling them: “I was deeply disappointed when I was notified of the situation… The public trust that we have invested great efforts in building has been will be significantly undermined by the misconduct of some individuals
TikTok CEO Shou Chew also addressed the situation, telling employees: “We take data security incredibly seriously” and that the company has been hard at work for over a year to create a new data storage program. US-based data company to show their “testament to that commitment.”
The bombshell comes after several US lawmakers and the Trump and Biden administrations raised concerns about security and privacy risks associated with TikTok over the past few years.
Dozens of states have banned the popular social media platform from federal devices and several are calling to protect American data from the Chinese government, The New York Times reported.
TikTok is currently negotiating with the US Treasury Department’s Committee on Foreign Investment, which will decide how the app handles the personal data of US users.
It has begun moving US data to a new data center called Oracle, based in Silicon Valley, to help provide peace of mind for US lawmakers and citizens.
White identified herself on Twitter (pictured), while the Financial Times identified Criddle
However, the previous data accessed by the four employees was still available outside of Oracle’s cloud, The New York Times reported. TikTok has said that it plans to remove all historical data outside of Oracle systems.
The purpose of the Oracle system is to protect US data from the Chinese government.
Senator Josh Hawley has previously called TikTok the “back door for the Communist Party to track keystrokes, contact lists, and location, and there’s no way to turn it off.”
“Under Chinese law, ByteDance is required to hand over data and that is a huge risk to Americans’ privacy,” he said earlier this week.
Hawley introduced a bill that would ban the app on all federal devices.