Twitter Bitcoin Hack
After the hackers had advertised the message from various Bitcoin-related Twitter accounts, they went huge. The first influential account to be hacked seems to be Elon Musk’s, followed in brief order by Bill Gates, Uber, Apple, Kanye West, Jeff Bezos, Mike Bloomberg, Joe Biden, and former president Barack Obama, among others.
Most of these accounts tweeted some modification of the identical advice: If someone were to send Bitcoin to the address specified in the tweets during a 30-minute window, the account owner would return double the amount. Unluckily, these outsized claims succeeded in fooling some people into sending over worthy cryptocurrency, but no crypto were ever sent in return. (Certainly) All of the tweets sent from these high-profile accounts guided victims to the same Bitcoin address.
At this stage, Twitter had taken on and was trying to restrain the account hacks. To check more scammy messages being shared, Twitter momentarily eliminated the ability for verified users to tweet. If the owners of those accounts needed to write on the platform, they either had to make temporary accounts, retweet existing tweets, or both. (Meanwhile, non-verified Twitter users had a field day.) Twitter seemed to take the situation under control and restored verified users’ ability to tweet at around 8:30 PM Eastern.
At that time, Twitter declared that it had started an inquiry into the hack, and one day later, the FBI declared that it was starting an inquiry of its own.
Most accounts should be able to Tweet again. As we continue working on a fix, this functionality may come and go. We're working to get things back to normal as quickly as possible.
— Twitter Support (@TwitterSupport) July 16, 2020
How did hackers do this?
At this point, Twitter’s inquiry is still ongoing, and there is little in the way of reliable information. Concerning the hack itself, here’s what the company has revealed so far:
- Some of its employees were targeted in a social engineering attack because of their access to “internal systems and tools.”
- The hackers were capable to “take control” of verified and high-profile Twitter accounts, and published the scam tweets “on their behalf”
- In the aftermath of the breach, Twitter has taken measures to restrict access to the aforementioned internal systems and tools, at least for the duration of the investigation.
How much money did hackers make with this hack?
The cost of the hackers’ final stealings isn’t confirmed at the moment. Early on, people observing the address defined in those celebrity tweets noticed that it was the beneficiary of almost $60,000 in Bitcoin transfers. At the time of reporting, the total amount sent to the address in issue reaches at 12.86874316 BTC, or $118,995.75.
Nevertheless, much of the cryptocurrency in the billfold affiliated with that address is no longer there. As it stands, the wallet currently holds the equivalent of about $141.
Learn more at: The Difference Between Bitcoin and Real Money
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