Security News > 2020 > July > Florida Teen Charged in Massive Twitter Hack, Bitcoin Theft
A Florida teen hacked the Twitter accounts of prominent politicians, celebrities and technology moguls to scam people around globe out of more than $100,000 in Bitcoin, authorities said Friday.
Twitter previously said hackers used the phone to fool the social media company's employees into giving them access.
After stealing employee credentials and getting into Twitter's systems, the hackers were able to target other employees who had access to account support tools, the company said.
The company has previously said the incident was a "Coordinated social engineering attack" that targeted some of its employees with access to internal systems and tools.
British cybersecurity analyst Graham Cluley said his guess was that a targeted Twitter employee or contractor received a message by phone asking them to call a number.