Hacker attack on Twitter 2020

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In the hacker attack on Twitter 2020 on July 15, 2020, the user accounts of around 130 prominent people and companies were hacked on the microblogging service Twitter . These accounts were used to publish tweets aimed at cheating Internet users out of Bitcoin credit . According to Twitter, it was a coordinated social engineering attack that gave the hackers access to Twitter's internal administration. The attackers were able to steal at least USD 110,000 .

On July 31, 2020, US police arrested three suspects in Florida . According to investigators, the main suspect is a 17-year-old teenager from Florida who is said to have carried out the attack along with two other suspects.

procedure

A (partially censored) scam tweet from Apple's account.

Forensic analysis of the attack revealed that the first fraudulent messages were initially posted by accounts with short, one- or two-digit, distinctive names such as “@ 6”. This was followed by cryptocurrency-related Twitter accounts on July 15, 2020 at around 8:00 p.m. UTC , including the accounts of Coinbase, CoinDesk and Binance. The scam then shifted to better-known accounts, with the first such tweet being sent from Elon Musk's Twitter account at 20:17 UTC. Other accounts apparently compromised included those of individuals like Barack Obama , Joe Biden , Geert Wilders , Bill Gates , Jeff Bezos , MrBeast , Michael Bloomberg , Warren Buffett , Floyd Mayweather , Kim Kardashian and Kanye West , as well as companies like Apple , Uber and Cash App . Twitter believed 130 accounts were affected; most of the accounts accessed in the scam had at least a million followers.

The tweets involved in the scam hack alleged that the sender, as a charity, would reimburse each user for twice the value of the bitcoin they sent to the specified wallet, often as part of a COVID-19 relief effort. The tweets followed malicious link sharing by a number of cryptocurrency companies; the website hosting the links went offline shortly after the tweets were posted.

reconstruction

After an initial reconstruction of the processes by the US federal authorities, the main suspect, 17-year-old Graham C., succeeded in convincing an IT employee from Twitter that he was also employed there and needed login information for the customer service portal. He then offered Twitter accounts with accomplices for sale by accessing the user accounts with the stolen Twitter company credentials and changing their passwords for the buyers.

reaction

Affected users were given the opportunity to retweet content, prompting NBC News to set up a temporary, unverified account so that they could continue to tweet, tweeting "major updates" on their primary account again. Joe Biden's campaign told CNN that they were "in touch with Twitter on this matter" and that his account had been "suspended".

During the incident, Twitter, Inc.'s share price fell 4% after the market closed.

Security experts have expressed concern that while the fraud may have been relatively minor in terms of financial impact, the ability of social engineering to adopt social media, involving employees from these companies, poses a major threat to the use of social media, particularly in the run-up to the 2020 presidential election in the United States, and could potentially lead to an international incident. Alex Stamos of Stanford University's Center for International Security and Cooperation said: "Twitter has become the number one platform for discussion among political elites, and it has real flaws."

BitTorrent CEO Justin Sun announced a $ 1 million bounty against the hackers. The announcement was made through BitTorrent's Twitter account, adding, “He will personally pay those who successfully track down the hackers / people behind this hack that affects our community and provide evidence that they will be brought to justice”.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Rishi Iyengar: Twitter accounts of Joe Biden, Barack Obama, Elon Musk, Bill Gates, and others apparently hacked (en-US) . In: CNN Business , July 15, 2020. 
  2. Musk and Gates 'hacked' in apparent Bitcoin scam (en-GB) . In: BBC News , July 15, 2020. Retrieved July 15, 2020. 
  3. 17-year-old is said to be the "mastermind" behind the Twitter hack. In: Spiegel. Retrieved August 1, 2020 .
  4. Mike Isaac, Sheera Frenkel, Kate Conger: Twitter Struggles to Unpack a Hack Within Its Walls . In: The New York Times . July 16, 2020, ISSN  0362-4331 ( nytimes.com [accessed July 17, 2020]).
  5. High-profile Twitter accounts simultaneously hacked to spread crypto scam. In: TechCrunch. Retrieved July 17, 2020 (American English).
  6. Nick Statt: Twitter's massive attack: What we know after Apple, Biden, Obama, Musk, and others tweeted a bitcoin scam. July 15, 2020, accessed on July 17, 2020 .
  7. Twitter account of Geert Wilders hacked. In: DutchNews.nl. July 16, 2020, accessed July 23, 2020 (UK English).
  8. Twitter says attackers targeted 130 accounts in Wednesday's breach. Retrieved July 17, 2020 .
  9. Major US Twitter accounts hacked into Bitcoin scam . In: BBC News . July 16, 2020 ( bbc.com [accessed July 17, 2020]).
  10. Sonam Sheth: Former President Barack Obama's Twitter account appears to have been hacked as part of a cryptocurrency scam. Retrieved July 17, 2020 .
  11. "17-year-old Twitter hacker: From" Minecraft "fraudster to Bitcoin thief" derstandard.at of August 3, 2020
  12. Twitter temporarily disabled tweets from verified accounts. Retrieved July 17, 2020 .
  13. Twitter stock slides after-hours amid scramble to contain high-profile account hacks. In: TechCrunch. Retrieved July 17, 2020 (American English).
  14. Sheera Frenkel, Nathaniel Popper, Kate Conger, David E. Sanger: A Brazen Online Attack Targets VIP Twitter Users in a Bitcoin Scam . In: The New York Times . July 15, 2020, ISSN  0362-4331 ( nytimes.com [accessed July 17, 2020]).
  15. Republic World: BitTorrent CEO Justin Sun announces $ 1 million bounty on Bitcoin scammers, decries hacking. Retrieved July 17, 2020 .