On Wednesday night, Twitter accounts of big names got hacked which turned out to be a part of Bitcoin scam. The followers were trapped into a cryptocurrency scam after hacking the many major public figures accounts through what seems to be a phishing attack.
Barak Obama, Bill Gates, Elon Musk, Apple, Joe Biden and many others were targeted among the hacked accounts of Twitter. Through these accounts, Hackers tweeted to encourage the followers to send money to a specific bitcoin wallet. They were fooled to get double money in return, a typical cryptocurrency scam.
The scam tweets would intermittently disappear and reappear only a few minutes later. Using the information of Twitter’s internal systems, the cyber-criminals messages had reached out to at least 350 million people. And the estimation of money they made through this scam went up to $110,000 (£86,800). This panned out to be one of the worst security breaches ever. For the company, it was a hard day indeed.
A hacker gained access to a Twitter “admin” tool on the company’s network that allowed them to hijack high-profile Twitter accounts to spread a cryptocurrency scam, according to a person with direct knowledge of the incident. On Wednesday evening, the company declared it to be a coordinated scam.
“We have no evidence that attackers accessed passwords. Currently, we don’t believe resetting your password is necessary.”
Twitter management said that they have, however, taken extra measures in response to Wednesday’s attack, like they have locked down any account that have attempted to change the password during the last 30 days, also resisted the resetting of password for some time.
The attack not only going to cost a potential loss of trust but also putting Twitter into a deep pit of legal accusation. According to the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) says organizations including Twitter have to show “appropriate” levels of security.
Data-protection officers are currently observing the situation of Twitter if they don’t find it safe for European users, it could be fined. The company’s chief executive, Jack Dorsey, also lost control of his account for 20 minutes earlier this year.
The attack could have been even worse impacting accounts belonging to such big names having millions of followers, it could be the Preface to giant security theft vast security implications. Cybersecurity experts and policymakers are now concerned about the data breach at an even bigger level involving the personal communications of the world’s most powerful people.
