Security News
Three individuals have been charged for their alleged roles in the July 15 hack on Twitter, an incident that resulted in Twitter profiles for some of the world's most recognizable celebrities, executives and public figures sending out tweets advertising a bitcoin scam. From there, Twitter said, the attackers targeted 130 Twitter accounts, tweeting from 45 of them, accessing the direct messages of 36 accounts, and downloading the Twitter data of seven.
A 17-year-old Florida boy was arrested and charged with last week's Twitter hack. News articles. Boing Boing post. Florida state attorney press release. This is a developing story. Post any...
US prosecutors on Friday announced they have charged three people, one of them from Britain, for roles in hijacking celebrity Twitter accounts and tricking people out of money. The US attorney's office in California said 19-year-old Mason "Chaewon" Sheppard of Britain along with Nima Fazeli, 22, of Florida were facing criminal charges in the case.
Authorities have charged three people who were allegedly behind with the recent high-profile Twitter hack - including a 17-year-old Tampa, Florida teen that they also arrested and say is the "Mastermind" behind the attack. The three are allegedly behind the high-profile July 15 Twitter hack that compromised 130 accounts of high-profile users such as Bill Gates, Elon Musk, Apple and Uber - to promote a bogus advance-fee cryptocurrency deal.
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.
Twitter has confirmed that the breach of several high-profile accounts that occurred on July 15 was caused by a phone spear phishing attack that targeted a small number of employees. Using the credentials of the affected employees, the attackers managed to compromise 130 different Twitter accounts, including those of Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Joe Biden, and Barack Obama, according to Twitter.
A mobile spearphishing attack targeting "a small number of employees" is what led to the unprecedented, major attack earlier in the month on high-profile Twitter accounts to push out a Bitcoin scam. On the day of the attack, Twitter revealed that the accounts fell victim to a compromise of the company's internal systems by a group of unidentified hackers that managed to access Twitter company tools and secure employee privileges.
Twitter on Thursday revealed that several employees were targeted with phone spear-phishing in a social engineering attack leading to the recent security incident. A total of 130 accounts were targeted in the incident, with hackers abusing internal Twitter systems and tools to reset the passwords for 45 of them.
"The social engineering that occurred on July 15, 2020, targeted a small number of employees through a phone spear phishing attack," Twitter explained. "Not all of the employees that were initially targeted had permissions to use account management tools, but the attackers used their credentials to access our internal systems and gain information about our processes. This knowledge then enabled them to target additional employees who did have access to our account support tools."
Twitter has offered further explanation of the celebrity account hijack hack that saw 130 users' timelines polluted with a Bitcoin scam. "The social engineering that occurred on July 15, 2020, targeted a small number of employees through a phone spear phishing attack," says a July 30 update to Twitter's incident report.