![]() ![]() ![]() The hack might also be a demonstration of Twitter’s weak security control as campaigning steps up for November’s presidential election in the United States, a contest in which the social megian giant is likely to play an influential role. “It seems therefore that they decided to exploit the accounts themselves to try to make a quick buck,” he said. Gerome Billois, Paris-based cybersecurity expert for the consultancy Wavestone, said early indications were that “at least one person has in recent days been trying to hawk access to individuals’ certified accounts on the dark web, without success”. “Very high profile people reach a lot of people very quickly bitcoin is something that can be turned into cash very quickly, anonymously – so I think somebody found a very clever way to extract a lot of money from people in in a very quick amount of time.” Ina Fried, chief technology correspondent at Axios, told Al Jazeera “this was all about opportunity”. The fake posts said people had 30 minutes to send $1,000 in bitcoin to receive twice as much in return.Ī total of 12.58 bitcoin – worth almost $116,000 – were sent to email addresses mentioned in the fraudulent tweets, according to. Twitter reacted quickly to deactivate the targeted accounts, delete the hoax messages and stop their onward transmission. ![]() “It maybe suggests that no one person should be able to use these internal tools: it’s more difficult to bribe four eyes than two,” he told AFP news agency. “That (Vice report) is deeply troubling as these platforms have such influence,” said Professor Alan Woodward, of the Centre for Cyber Security at the University of Surrey in Britain. One of the sources told the media group they had paid the employee. We’re diagnosing and will share everything we can when we have a more complete understanding of exactly what happened.”Ĭiting web screenshots and two anonymous sources apparently behind the hack, Vice reported that a Twitter insider was responsible. “Tough day for us at Twitter,” CEO Jack Dorsey said. The Great Facebook Boycott: Will it make any difference? The network’s admission means that even IT-savvy staff at one of the world’s best known internet companies are not immune. “Social engineering” describes fraudsters trying to manipulate their targets into divulging confidential information. Twitter says it is still investigating but believes it fell victim to “a coordinated social engineering attack by people who successfully targeted some of our employees with access to internal systems and tools”. Here is what we know so far: What happened? The unidentified hackers broke into the high-profile accounts in a scam apparently designed to lure people into sending money to an anonymous bitcoin account Social media giant Twitter is scrambling to fix a major hacking of its system that has seen fake messages posted to some of the most-followed accounts in the world.Īmong those targeted on Wednesday were former US President Barack Obama, Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden and a number of tech billionaires including Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates and Tesla CEO Elon Musk. ![]()
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