Twitter suffered a hacking attack from unknown actors who targeted the platform’s most prominent accounts, including American political figures, entertainment moguls and top tier members of the tech world.
The scam on Twitter created a worldwide social buzz after hackers took over a host of V.I.P accounts and asked their followers to submit a Bitcoin payments to an address – after which they would send back a double amount of the deposited money.
The July 15 event is reported to have occurred in waves, with Twitter struggling to contain the situation in what has been considered to be among the most audacious online attacks in recent history.
The attack started out with the Twitter accounts of notable figures in the cryptocurrency world before extending to those belonging to high profile people.
Some of the Twitter celebrity accounts that were affected included those belonging to former U.S. Vice President and current Democratic Presidential Candidate Joe Biden, former U.S. President Barack Obama, American Rapper Kanye West, Billionaire Philanthropist Bill Gates and entrepreneur Elon Musk.
SS of Obama’s Fake Tweet
A Coordinated Social Engineering Attack
As soon as Twitter detected the online attack, the platform’s support team swung into action to eliminate the hackers’ messages, although it appeared that similar tweets were posted again from the same profiles – an aspect that strongly suggested Twitter’s difficulty at saving the situation.
Eventually, the social media giant was prompted to disable significant faculties of its services, including the ability of verified accounts to send tweets. The situation was sustained for a couple of hours as the company rushed to prevent the online attack from becoming exacerbated.
The company posted a Tweet to update users about the incident. The published post notified its audience that the affected accounts had been locked temporarily, and that the restoration of access to the legitimate account owners would only occur at the confirmation that Twitter streets had been fully secured.
Screenshot of a post published by the official Twitter Support team. (Source: Twitter)
According to Twitter’s investigation into the online attack, the breach was made possible when hackers compromised the accounts belonging to employees with access to the company’s internal systems.
A Twitter spokesperson commented on the incident by likening the breach to a “coordinated social engineering attack” in which threat actors trick targets into giving up their credentials. It is through this method that the hackers succeeded to access the firm’s internal systems and publish the tweets using prominent accounts.
Although the hackers did not exploit their access to Twitter internal systems to attack globally-important institutions and infrastructure, the latest breach seems to have shaken the international cybersecurity ranks as the perpetrators would have possibly caused far greater havoc – rather than asking for Bitcoin.
Hackers Still Unknown
By the evening of July 15, it is reported that the Bitcoin wallets that were promoted in the tweets had received more than 300 crypto transactions, with more than $100,000 worth of Bitcoin being harvested. The information was provided by online platforms that specialize in the analysis of Bitcoin’s ledger of transactions.
As it stands, experts have not succeeded at identifying the perpetrators of the online attack – very little evidence was left behind by the attackers although some observers may be quick to consider the involvement of North Korean hackers.
Otherwise, according to one intelligence expert, the nature of this cyber-attack suggests that the breach was conducted by an individual attacker rather than a state. The fact that the attack did not focus on stock market disruptions of the grand scale indicate that the hacker or group of hackers were rather “amateurish”.
As far as Twitter is concerned, it can be inferred that the attack took advantage of the platform’s internal security flaws rather than those of its account holders.
Twitter suffered a hacking attack from unknown actors who targeted the platform’s most prominent accounts, including American political figures, entertainment moguls and top tier members of the tech world.
The scam on Twitter created a worldwide social buzz after hackers took over a host of V.I.P accounts and asked their followers to submit a Bitcoin payments to an address – after which they would send back a double amount of the deposited money.
The July 15 event is reported to have occurred in waves, with Twitter struggling to contain the situation in what has been considered to be among the most audacious online attacks in recent history.
The attack started out with the Twitter accounts of notable figures in the cryptocurrency world before extending to those belonging to high profile people.
Some of the Twitter celebrity accounts that were affected included those belonging to former U.S. Vice President and current Democratic Presidential Candidate Joe Biden, former U.S. President Barack Obama, American Rapper Kanye West, Billionaire Philanthropist Bill Gates and entrepreneur Elon Musk.
SS of Obama’s Tweet
A Coordinated Social Engineering Attack
As soon as Twitter detected the online attack, the platform’s support team swung into action to eliminate the hackers’ messages, although it appeared that similar tweets were posted again from the same profiles – an aspect that strongly suggested Twitter’s difficulty at saving the situation.
Eventually, the social media giant was prompted to disable significant faculties of its services, including the ability of verified accounts to send tweets. The situation was sustained for a couple of hours as the company rushed to prevent the online attack from becoming exacerbated.
The company posted a Tweet to update users about the incident. The published post notified its audience that the affected accounts had been locked temporarily, and that the restoration of access to the legitimate account owners would only occur at the confirmation that Twitter streets had been fully secured.
Screenshot of a post published by the official Twitter Support team. (Source: Twitter)
According to Twitter’s investigation into the online attack, the breach was made possible when hackers compromised the accounts belonging to employees with access to the company’s internal systems.
A Twitter spokesperson commented on the incident by likening the breach to a “coordinated social engineering attack” in which threat actors trick targets into giving up their credentials. It is through this method that the hackers succeeded to access the firm’s internal systems and publish the tweets using prominent accounts.
Although the hackers did not exploit their access to Twitter internal systems to attack globally-important institutions and infrastructure, the latest breach seems to have shaken the international cybersecurity ranks as the perpetrators would have possibly caused far greater havoc – rather than asking for Bitcoin.
Hackers Still Unknown
By the evening of July 15, it is reported that the Bitcoin wallets that were promoted in the tweets had received more than 300 crypto transactions, with more than $100,000 worth of Bitcoin being harvested. The information was provided by online platforms that specialize in the analysis of Bitcoin’s ledger of transactions.
As it stands, experts have not succeeded at identifying the perpetrators of the online attack – very little evidence was left behind by the attackers although some observers may be quick to consider the involvement of North Korean hackers.
Otherwise, according to one intelligence expert, the nature of this cyber-attack suggests that the breach was conducted by an individual attacker rather than a state. The fact that the attack did not focus on stock market disruptions of the grand scale indicate that the hacker or group of hackers were rather “amateurish”.
As far as Twitter is concerned, it can be inferred that the attack took advantage of the platform’s internal security flaws rather than those of its account holders.
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