San Francisco (AFP) – The hackers involved in the high-profile hijacking of Twitter accounts earlier this week were young friends with no ties to state or organized crime, The New York Times reported Friday.
The attack, which Twitter and federal police are investigating, began with a playful message among hackers on the Discord platform, a popular chat service among gamers, according to the Times.
The newspaper said it had interviewed four people who participated in the hack, who shared logs and screenshots backing up their accounts of what happened.
“Interviews indicate that the attack was not the work of a single country like Russia or a sophisticated group of hackers,” the Times reported.
Instead, it was made by a group of young people, one of whom says he lives at home with his mother, who met because of his obsession with possessing early or unusual screen names, particularly a letter or number, such as @ and @ 6 “.
The massive attack by high-profile users, from Elon Musk to Joe Biden, has raised questions about Twitter’s security, as it serves as a megaphone for politicians ahead of the November election.
“Based on what we know at the moment, we believe that approximately 130 accounts were attacked by the attackers in some way as part of the incident,” Twitter said in a tweet.
“For a small subset of these accounts, attackers were able to gain control of the accounts and then send Tweets from those accounts.”
Official posts from Apple, Uber, Kanye West, Bill Gates, Barack Obama, and many others tweeted that attempted to trick people into hacking the virtual currency bitcoin into hackers.
Twitter said it appeared to be a “coordinated social engineering attack by people who successfully targeted some of our employees with access to internal tools and systems.”
– ‘Original gangster’ accounts –
The fraudulent posts, which were largely removed, said people had 30 minutes to send $ 1,000 in bitcoin cryptocurrencies, promising that they would receive double in return.
More than $ 100,000 in bitcoins were sent to the email addresses mentioned in the tweets, according to Blockchain.com, which monitors crypto transactions.
The young hackers interviewed by the Times said that a mysterious user named “Kirk” started the scheme with a message and was the one who had access to Twitter accounts.
They claimed they were only involved in commanding lesser-known Twitter accounts, particularly to slide in the coveted short shooters like an “@” sign and unique letters or numbers that could be easily sold, according to the report.
The young hackers maintained that they stopped serving as intermediaries for “Kirk” when high-profile accounts became targets.
Some hackers are “obsessed” with hijacking “Original Gangster” social media accounts under surveillance in the early days of services that have short profile names, according to Brian Krebs of Krebs on Security.
“Owning these OG accounts confers a measure of status and perceived influence and wealth in SIM swap circles, as such accounts can often fetch thousands of dollars when resold underground,” Krebs said in a publication.
The hackers involved in the attack on Twitter announced account names on an OGusers.com website, requesting payment in bitcoin, according to the Times report.
