Sat 18 July 2020:
Twitter Inc said on Saturday that hackers were able to download account information for up to eight accounts involved in the hack of its systems this week, but said none of them were verified accounts.
The company said the attackers targeted 130 accounts, and were able to reset passwords and take control of 45 of them and tweet from those accounts.
Hackers accessed Twitter’s internal systems to hijack some of the platform’s top voices including U.S. presidential candidate Joe Biden, reality TV star Kim Kardashian, former U.S. President Barack Obama and billionaire Elon Musk and used them to solicit digital currency.
Publicly available blockchain records show the apparent scammers received more than $100,000 worth of cryptocurrency.
The high-profile accounts that were hacked also included rapper Kanye West, Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos, investor Warren Buffett, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, and the corporate accounts for Uber and Apple.
On Wednesday, the accounts of dozens of internationally famous figures spanning tech, politics and entertainment posted similar tweets soliciting donations via Bitcoin. Apple, Uber and other businesses were also caught up in the sprawling hack, which Twitter later attributed to a social engineering attack on its employees.
Politicians and cybersecurity experts have raised concerns in the wake of the widespread hack that the direct messages of some of the most powerful people in the world could have been accessed during the attack on Wednesday. If there’s sensitive information in these messages, hackers could use it for blackmail or ransomware.
Twitter’s direct messages aren’t end-to-end encrypted, which would have prevented employees from reading the private messages.
“Everyone is asking we to give back, and now is the time,” a now-deleted tweet from Gates’ said, pledging to double all payments to a Bitcoin address for the next 30 minutes.
“I’m feeling generous because of Covid-19,” Musk’s tweet said. “I’ll double any BTC payment sent to my BTC address for the next hour. Good luck, and stay safe out there!” All the tweets were subsequently deleted and verified Twitter accounts, those with a blue check, were temporarily silenced.
In addition to Twitter, the FBI also announced the launch of probe into the hacking incident.
In its latest statement, Twitter said attackers “manipulated a small number of employees” to gain access to the internal support tools used in the hack.
The company said it was holding back some of the details of the attack as it continues its investigation and reiterated that it was working with impacted account owners.
