Twitter says hackers “manipulated” some of its employees to access accounts in a high-profile attack on the social media company, including those of Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden and tech entrepreneur Elon Musk.
Official posts from Apple, Uber, Bill Gates, and many others tweeted out posts that attempted to trick people into sending Bitcoin hackers on Wednesday, forcing Twitter to block large numbers of accounts in a control move. Of Damage.
More than $ 100,000 of the virtual currency was sent to the email addresses mentioned in the tweets, according to Blockchain.com, which monitors crypto transactions.
“We know that they accessed tools that are only available to our internal support teams to target 130 Twitter accounts,” said a statement posted on the Twitter blog. on Saturday.
For 45 of those accounts, hackers were able to reset passwords, log in and send tweets, he added, while downloading the personal data of up to eight unverified users.
Twitter blocked affected accounts and removed fraudulent tweets. It also closed accounts unaffected by the hack as a precaution. Most of them have now been restored, the company said Saturday.
Trump ‘will remain on Twitter ‘
The attack was carried out by a group of young friends with no ties to organized or state crime, the New York Times reported on Friday.
The newspaper said it interviewed four people involved in the hacking, who shared logs and screenshots backing up their accounts of what happened.
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Biden, Kardashian, other Twitter accounts hacked into bitcoin scam |
The young hackers said that a mysterious user named “Kirk” started the scheme with a message and was the one who had access to several Twitter accounts.
They added that they were only involved in taking control of lesser-known but desirable Twitter accounts, such as an “@” sign and unique letters or numbers that could be easily sold, according to the report.
Hackers maintained that they stopped serving as intermediaries for “Kirk” when high-profile users became targets.
President Donald Trump’s account, which has 83.5 million followers, was not attacked.
“The president will remain on Twitter,” said White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany. “Her account was secure and was not compromised during these attacks.”
The hack has raised questions about Twitter’s security as it serves as a megaphone for American politicians ahead of the November presidential election.
Twitter said it is limiting the information it makes public about the attack while taking “remediation steps” to secure the site, as well as training employees to protect themselves against future hacking attempts.
The FBI’s San Francisco division is leading an investigation into the hacking, and many Washington lawmakers are also asking for an account of how it happened.
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