Washington (AFP)

The hackers who orchestrated the spectacular attack on Twitter accounts of celebrities and political figures have "successfully manipulated a small number of employees" of Twitter, said Saturday the social network, which apologizes and is aware of the blow to the trust of users.

Twitter said that in total the hackers targeted 130 accounts and managed to penetrate 45 of them, thanks to "the use of tools only accessible to internal support teams".

That's a very small number compared to the total number of users (about 330 million monthly users or 166 million daily users) but among these hacked accounts were political leaders like the Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden , former President Barack Obama and big bosses like Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, Elon Musk, the boss of Tesla or Bill Gates, the founder of Microsoft.

Twitter easily recognizes the damage to its reputation.

"We are embarrassed, disappointed and above all we are sorry. We know that we need to regain your confidence and we will support all the efforts made so that those responsible are brought to justice", can be read on his blog.

- Double the bet-

In this case, the objective of the pirates seemed to be making quick money, if we are to believe their operating mode.

From hacked accounts, hackers sent enticing messages inciting subscribers to send bitcoins, a cryptocurrency, in exchange for twice the amount sent.

According to specialized sites which record bitcoin exchanges but do not allow the recipients to be traced, some 100,000 dollars have been sent.

Twitter said on Saturday that for eight of these accounts, hackers also downloaded data, which is normally only available to the account owner.

None of these accounts were certified, that is to say with the distinctive little blue badge which increases their credibility and gives certain privileges to users.

Twitter also said that thanks to the tools they had taken control of, hackers managed to cross the barrier of double authentication, which normally makes it possible to secure an account beyond a simple password.

This action, on which the FBI opened an investigation, sparked a debate on the security of social platforms a few months before the presidential election in November in the United States but also on the possible consequences if hackers managed to take the account Donald Trump, who often conducts diplomacy on Twitter, where he has 83.5 million subscribers.

On Wednesday, @realdonaldtrump was not hacked.

- Kanye's phone? -

Twitter has not yet given any details on the employees involved in this hacking, nor on the identity of the hackers.

They had access to personal information from account holders, including email addresses and phone numbers.

In the case of the accounts that were hacked, the hackers had access to "more information," said Twitter, adding that its investigative teams continue to determine exactly which ones.

According to the New York Times, everything started from a mysterious hacker operating under the name of "Kirk" and having internal access.

The information collected by the daily newspaper thus seems to reject the thesis of an attack orchestrated by a State or by a known group of hackers.

The hacking was carried out "by a group of young people," one of whom says he still lives with his mother, and who met because of their obsession with hard-to-get usernames, writes the New York Times.

The hackers interviewed by the daily claimed to have participated only in the takeover of lesser-known accounts, but in the names prized by certain internet users, in order to resell them against bitcoins.

These were accounts whose username only includes a letter or a number, for example, which is a guarantee of a presence on the social network since its inception.

© 2020 AFP