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Several verified high profile Twitter accounts were hacked on Wednesday in a cryptocurrency scam that targeted accounts belonging to Apple, Tesla CEO Elon Musk, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, Microsoft CEO Bill Gates, and more.

apple_bitcoin_hack.jpg

Twitter has said it doesn't believe any passwords were stolen in the hack, which forced the company to temporarily lock all verified accounts on the platform. While the company continues to investigate the attack, a new report suggests at least one Twitter employee and possibly more were involved in the takeover.

Motherboard was able to speak to two of the alleged hackers, who claim they paid a Twitter employee to gain access to the compromised accounts using an internal tool. This tool apparently allows staff to change the email address associated with accounts, and it was this ability that allowed the security breach to take place.

Twitter on Thursday said that a "coordinated social engineering attack" had targeted some of its staff as part of the hack.


Hackers posted tweets on the compromised accounts saying that if followers sent Bitcoin to a wallet address then they would receive double the amount in return. Many users clearly fell for the scam, which earned the hackers over $100,000 in the space of two hours.

Twitter believes approximately 130 accounts were targeted by the attackers in some way as part of the incident, but the company has not yet been able to confirm whether DMs were compromised. The FBI is also investigating how the breach was allowed to happen.

Article Link: Twitter Hackers Gained Access to Accounts Using Internal Tool
 
  • Wow
Reactions: DeepIn2U
I’ve lost count of how many tweets from accounts similar to Elon’s I’ve blocked and reported. Pretty much the same text as above.
 
  • Like
Reactions: DeepIn2U
I'm not 100% sure but this is what I saw online. Transactions connected to that account. It can be legit or fake I have no idea.
 

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Hmmm, maybe let's try some negative psychology. There must be somebody here that's so drunk or otherwise out of it that they'll happily transfer some funds. 🙃

Wanna donate for a terrible cause? I guarantee you will not get anything back and that I will put all the funds to bad use and make peoples' life just a bit more miserable. Private message me if not interested.
 
If Twitter has the kind of accounting procedures that we had in the hospitals I worked in then it should be fairly straightforward to find out who was "engineered" to open the accounts. Also, a single person should not be allowed to open accounts this way. Maybe requiring a counter-signature would be a start.
 
If Twitter has the kind of accounting procedures that we had in the hospitals I worked in then it should be fairly straightforward to find out who was "engineered" to open the accounts. Also, a single person should not be allowed to open accounts this way. Maybe requiring a counter-signature would be a start.
It seem like Twitter know who did facilitate the attack. The question is in what degree he or she was coerced into doing it. Even considering financial benefit.
 
  • Like
Reactions: ArtOfWarfare
Just another reason that signing up for a Twitter account is a negative IQ test.

OTOH, Twitter should be legally responsible for any losses occurred AND a mega libel suit for incompetency
 
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  • Disagree
Reactions: KeithBN and eulslix
the sad thing about this scam is we know its either perpetrated by idiots who wanted money in a wallet thats basically useless because the BTC ledger is public so we can have idea when the money is spent and investigate where/what on. (not likely)

not to mention a few years ago, a single fake tweet "from the AP" cost billions in losses and the hack lasted like 3 minutes.

this hack lasted 2-3hours where the hackers/rogue employee had full account access to every blue check including DM's
there are easier ways to make money with that kind of info/access if that was the goal
which makes the Bitcoin scam look like a smokescreen or the US being put on notice by an adversary

which funny enough is the most comforting, we could already assume an enemy Gov't has the hacking resources as well as the means to bribe/coerce an employee.
but if it was truly just idiots out for money it shows what power idiots can access at twitter.

eitherway shows the security problems
 
another talking point for end to end encryption, now the government needs to solve the problem since they want to look into everyone's account.
 
Hmmm, maybe let's try some negative psychology. There must be somebody here that's so drunk or otherwise out of it that they'll happily transfer some funds. 🙃

Wanna donate for a terrible cause? I guarantee you will not get anything back and that I will put all the funds to bad use and make peoples' life just a bit more miserable. Private message me if not interested.
Yes - I'm in! (although too drunk right now)
 
  • Haha
Reactions: Dj64Mk7
I think some of the hacked accounts, you could almost imagine them doing something nice (like Bill Gates for example), but c'mon...anyone who thinks Apple is going to give out free money deserves what they lose!
 
  • Like
Reactions: cr2 and macfacts
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