Twitter faced an impressive attack on Wednesday evening with dozens of accounts of personalities and companies hacked. According to the New York Times , the thesis of a coup orchestrated by a state or by a known group of hackers can be rejected. According to the daily, everything started from a mysterious hacker with internal access, contacted with other accomplices involved.
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 .
Employees "manipulated" by hackers
The newspaper reports having exchanged at length with several of them, who have all been in contact with a certain "Kirk", in possession of the famous accesses. The latter allegedly told one of the hackers interviewed that he worked for Twitter. According to another, he explained that he had access to internal messages on Slack messaging, where he found a way to connect to the company's servers. According to Twitter, hackers have "manipulated" Twitter employees to access celebrity accounts.
Hackers interviewed by the New York Times said they only participated in the takeover of lesser-known accounts, but in the names sought after by some internet users, in order to resell them for 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.
A scam over 100,000 dollars
But the same accesses were then used Wednesday to take control of accounts of personalities such as the presidential candidate Joe Biden, the entrepreneurs Bill Gates and Elon Musk, the former president Barack Obama… All posted messages - often quickly erased - inviting their very many subscribers to send them bitcoins, against the false promise of receiving double. The scam would have led to exchanges for the equivalent of more than 100,000 dollars, according to a specialized site.
According to Twitter, which opened an investigation, it was a “coordinated attack” by “people who have successfully targeted some of our employees who have access to our internal systems and tools. "We believe that approximately 130 accounts were targeted by the attackers in one way or another," wrote Twitter. “For a small part of these accounts, the attackers were able to take control and send tweets. "
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- By the Web
- Hacker
- Cyber attack
- Bitcoin
- Piracy