Twitter Hacked

In a major show of force, hackers breached some of the site’s most prominent accounts, a Who’s Who of Americans in politics, entertainment and tech.

https://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/202...2f378960e3.jpg


It was about 4 in the afternoon on Wednesday on the East Coast when chaos struck online. Dozens of the biggest names in America — including Joseph R. Biden Jr., Barack Obama, Kanye West, Bill Gates and Elon Musk — posted similar messages on Twitter: Send Bitcoin and the famous people would send back double your money.

It was all a scam, of course, the result of one of the most brazen online attacks in memory.

A first wave of attacks hit the Twitter accounts of prominent cryptocurrency leaders and companies. But soon after, the list of victims broadened to include a Who’s Who of Americans in politics, entertainment and tech, in a major show of force by the hackers.

Twitter quickly removed many of the messages, but in some cases similar tweets were sent again from the same accounts, suggesting that Twitter was powerless to regain control.

The company eventually disabled broad swaths of its service, including the ability of verified users to tweet, for a couple of hours as it scrambled to prevent the scam from spreading further. The company sent a tweet saying that it was investigating the problem and looking for a fix. “You may be unable to Tweet or reset your password while we review and address this incident,” the company said in a second tweet. Service was restored around 8:30 Wednesday night.

Twitter’s investigation into the breach revealed that several employees who had access to internal systems had their accounts compromised in a “coordinated social engineering attack,” a spokesman said, referring to attacks that trick people into giving up their credentials. The attackers then used Twitter’s internal systems to tweet from high-profile accounts like Mr. Biden’s.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/15/t...elon-musk.html

Those accounts weren't hacked, it was Twitter employees that were hacked. Malware inserted coupled with some social engineering and WHAMO, hackers were now on the inside. This was a hack against Twitter..

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by BruteForce

Those accounts weren't hacked, it was Twitter employees that were hacked. Malware inserted coupled with some social engineering and WHAMO, hackers were now on the inside. This was a hack against Twitter..

---

Yeah gotcha. Apparently Twitter needs to work on their internal training. Their employees should know better.

Interesting that Trump's team never tweeted these. Even if they were up for 1 second, there would be 100 screenshots from bots and dedicated anti trumpers.

Note the timing of this, the next day after accounts like Chrissy Teigen is deleting 60K tweets and blocking 1M followers because they are calling her out on the pedo stuff she's posted (pizzagate). Now certain people can say "see, it wasn't me, I was hacked". Remember Anthony Wiener?

Attachment 95088

Twitter hack: Three charged for alleged roles, including 17-year-old 'mastermind'

In a statement released Friday, the Hillsborough State Attorney's Office in Florida said the teen*was the "mastermind" behind the hack, which*involved posting messages on high-profile Twitter accounts soliciting bitcoin.

The teen faces 30 felony counts including 17 counts of communications fraud, organized fraud and fraudulent use of personal information. The teen was arrested on Friday, said the attorney's office, and has been charged as an adult.

"These crimes were perpetrated using the names of famous people and celebrities, but they’re not the primary victims here," said Hillsborough State Attorney Andrew Warren in a statement. "This ‘Bit-Con’ was designed to steal money from regular Americans from all over the country, including here in Florida."

https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/...ch/5557349002/