Security News
A breach in Twitter's security that allowed hackers to break into the accounts of leaders and technology moguls is one of the worst attacks in recent years and may shake trust in a platform politicians and CEOs use to communicate with the public, experts said Thursday. Cybersecurity experts say such a breach could have dire consequences since the attackers were tweeting from verified, globally influential accounts with millions of followers.
Twitter has confirmed that hackers leveraged internal tools to take over high-profile accounts and use them to post scam tweets. After containing the incident and closing the unauthorized access, Twitter confirmed that the hackers used social engineering to target "Employees with access to internal systems and tools."
The Twittersphere went into overdrive on Wednesday as a bunch of prominent, verified Twitter accounts were hijacked and started promoting a COVID-19 cryptocurrency giveaway scam. The attackers simultaneously compromised Twitter accounts of Bill Gates, Elon Musk, Barack Obama, Jeff Bezos, Joe Biden, Mike Bloomberg, Apple, Uber, as well as those of cryptocurrency exchanges Binance, Coinbase, KuCoin and Gemini, the CoinDesk news site and other top crypto accounts.
Twitter has offered its initial analysis of the Wednesday mass hijacking of prominent twits' accounts - and suggested it all kicked off after its staff fell for social engineering. Judging from leaked screenshots of Twitter's internal systems circulating online and seen by El Reg, it appears one or more miscreants were able to gain direct or indirect access to an administration panel used by Twitter employees to configure accounts, by tricking or coercing the social network's staff.
Many prominent, verified Twitter accounts have been tweeting out cryptocoin scams, with fake tweets reported from an eclectic range of high-profile people and companies, apparently including Joe Biden, Elon Musk, Barack Obama, Bill Gates, Apple and many others. The scam tweets reportedly included catchy - if highly unlikely - messages such as "Feeling greatful , doubling all payments made to my Bitcoin address," urging people to pay out $1000 and get $2000 back.
The Twitter accounts of Bill Gates, Elon Musk, Joe Biden, Apple and Uber have each been hijacked at the same time to push a cryptocurrency scam in an unprecedented breach of Twitter accounts. Twitter locked down thousands of verified accounts belonging to elite Twitter users and high-profile companies Wednesday afternoon in an effort to prevent hackers from perpetrating a massive cryptocurrency scam.
Twitter said it is working to fix a "Security incident" after scammers hijacked high-profile accounts on Wednesday to dupe people out of money. "We are aware of a security incident impacting accounts on Twitter," the messaging platform said in a tweet.
A number of high profile Twitter accounts, including Bill Gates, Elon Musk and Apple, were breached on Wednesday. Twitter said in an official statement: "We are aware of a security incident impacting accounts Twitter accounts. We are investigating and taking steps to fix it. We will update everyone shortly".
The Twitter accounts of Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, Tesla CEO Elon Musk, and other celebrities were briefly taken over on Wednesday, along with the accounts of various cryptocurrency businesses and affiliated executives, to promote a Bitcoin scam. Twitter also silenced verified blue-tick accounts temporarily to prevent more abuse while it got to the bottom of the kerfuffle.
The official Twitter accounts of Apple, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and others were hijacked on Wednesday by scammers trying to dupe people into sending cryptocurrency bitcoin, in a massive hack. The list of accounts commandeered simultaneously grew rapidly to include Joe Biden, Barack Obama, Uber, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, bitcoin specialty firms and many others.