It was galore of commotion for the entire Twitter space on the 15th of July. Users of the social media application have been left in shock after witnessing what Cybersecurity experts say is the “worst hack of a major social media platform yet.” Although Crypto-Twitter has witnessed a large number of scams over the year, this was a first of its kind.
Hackers have made away with thousands of dollars
It all began when a hacker, whose identity is still unknown, got a hold of the official Twitter accounts of some of the world’s richest tech-entrepreneurs, celebrities and a number of other public figures, and ran a fake cryptocurrency giveaway scam. In less than 5 minutes, the hacker had already received more than $15,000 in Bitcoin.
The scam giveaway tweets which have since been deleted were all similar to one another, made with the same pattern on all accounts, with only a few changes made suit the victim’s audiences. On Bill Gates’s official Twitter, it reads; “Everyone is asking me to give back. You send $1,000, I send you back $2,000.”
So far, the Bitcoin address used for the scam has received over 12 BTC, and with today’s exchange rate, that’s worth more than $100k. But the numbers may even be higher.
Twitter confirms that it was an insider job
In a series of Tweets from Twitter’s official support handle, Twitter confirmed that the hackers accessed some of its “internal tools,” adding that the attacks were coordinated and were targeted at a specific number of its employees.
We detected what we believe to be a coordinated social engineering attack by people who successfully targeted some of our employees with access to internal systems and tools.
— Twitter Support (@TwitterSupport) July 16, 2020
We know they used this access to take control of many highly-visible (including verified) accounts and Tweet on their behalf. We’re looking into what other malicious activity they may have conducted or information they may have accessed and will share more here as we have it.
— Twitter Support (@TwitterSupport) July 16, 2020
Celebrities, Billionaires even Twitter’s official support; There’s a long list to unpack
The hackers took a deep dive into Twitter, targeting the biggest of the biggest. From celebrities to cryptocurrency CEOs, to some of the biggest Tech entrepreneurs, the list goes on.
Bill Gates, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Mike Bloomberg, Kim Kardashian West, Kanye West, Barrack Obama, Wiz Khalifa, Joe Biden, Mike Bloomberg, Apple, Justin Sun, Warren Buffett, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu were some of the top accounts that were breached.
Exchanges were not left out. The official accounts of Coinbase, Kucoin, Binance, and Gemini were also used to make similar tweets from the hacker.
At press time, the platform is still being investigated but affected accounts have since been analyzed and are now accessible by the real owners.
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