Twitter CEO and co-founder Jack Dorsey addresses students at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) on November 12, 2018 in New Delhi, India.
Amal KS | Hindustan Times | fake pictures
Hackers who took over the accounts of around 130 people last week in an apparent bitcoin scam were able to access direct messages, Twitter said Wednesday.
Hackers accessed 36 direct message boxes, including one for an elected official in the Netherlands, Twitter said. Direct messages are similar to text messages on the phone, and are generally presumed to be private. Disclosure could cause users to lose faith in the service’s ability to prevent outsiders from reading confidential messages.
Twitter’s reveal on Wednesday complicates an already murky picture of who the hackers were and what they were looking for.
Hackers were able to tweet from the accounts of Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden, former President Barack Obama, and Tesla CEO Elon Musk, among other notable figures.
Although many of the most high-profile hacked accounts tweeted a scam asking for bitcoin, an analysis of cryptocurrency transactions showed that the account mentioned by hackers only raised $ 121,000, which appears to be a low sum for what was a hack. historical that included internal access to an important social network.
Twitter said it did not believe hackers would look to the DMs for any other elected official other than the politician in the Netherlands.
Still, direct messages from these accounts and other prominent victims may contain non-public information or photos sent to or from important figures, which hackers may choose to use or advertise at a later time in the future.
Twitter said last week that attackers had downloaded take-away information using the “Your Twitter Data” tool for eight accounts.
The FBI is reportedly investigating the hack.
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