Twitter: VIP accounts suspended after massive hack

Bill Gates, Elon Musk, Joe Biden, Barack Obama: these personalities and many others were targeted Wednesday, July 15, by a massive piracy of cryptocurrencies on Twitter, which brings back to the fore the issue of cybersecurity.

Messages on these hacked accounts, most of them quickly erased, in particular invited internet users to send bitcoins to specific addresses, claiming to send back in exchange double the amounts transferred.

According to the specialized site Blockchain.com, which tracks transactions made in cryptocurrencies, a total of 12.58 bitcoins, or nearly 116,000 dollars, was sent to one of the addresses mentioned in the fraudulent tweets.

"Happy Wednesday! I offer bitcoin to all my subscribers. I double all payments sent to the bitcoin address below," read users on the account of Elon Musk, the boss of Tesla.

Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, Amazon boss Jeff Bezos, Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden, former New York mayor Michael Bloomberg, and famed investor Warren Buffett have posted messages with similar content for a while.

Those of companies like Apple and Uber, as well as companies specialized in bitcoin have also been victims of this very large-scale piracy.

Suspended accounts 

Joe Biden's campaign indicated that the social network had blocked the Democratic candidate's account as soon as the intrusion was noticed in order to erase the problematic tweet.

"We can confirm that this tweet was not sent by Bill Gates," a spokeswoman for Bill Gates told AFP.

"You may not be able to tweet or reset your password while we are investigating this incident," said the Twitter Support account late in the afternoon.

Internally, we've taken significant steps to limit access to internal systems and tools while our investigation is ongoing. More updates to come as our investigation continues.

For almost two hours, certified users, whose account is decorated with a blue mark, were indeed unable to publish messages.

"Most of the accounts should be able to tweet again. We are still working on solving the problem, and this function could disappear and return", warned the social network in the evening while its certified users, including President Donald Trump, could post messages again.

Fall on wall street

Right after the hack, the company's stock plummeted to Wall Street in electronic trading after the close.

"The most likely hypothesis is that hackers came into the Twitter employee administration panel, which allows passwords to be changed and deactivate authentication on several factors," said Rachel Tobac, president of the SocialProof Security cybersecurity company.

Such manipulation, specifies Rachel Tobac, could have allowed individuals or malicious groups to take control of the attacked accounts. 

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The bluebird network has already been the target of targeted attacks in the past.

In March 2017, many certified accounts, including those of Amnesty International, the French Ministry of the Economy or the BBC North America, had been hacked by suspected hackers, favorable to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Wednesday's hacking, however, seems to be on a whole different scale and was already raising many questions just over three months before the US presidential election, where cybersecurity issues should be at the forefront.

With AFP

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