The concept of social media,
manifest today in the prominence of platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and
more, has brought both benefits and problems to the online community over the
years. On the one hand there are the ease and variety of communications plus
the formation of internet communities; on the other hand, it has opened a new
venue for vicious targeted attacks on specific persons for their beliefs or
opinions, often with the perpetrators able to hide behind anonymity. On the
extreme end of that are the damaging cyber-hack attacks that are extremely
dangerous for both users and platforms.
As The Verge tells us, top micro-blog and social network Twitter was
the unfortunate target of a massive hacking effort that struck at the accounts
of many high-profile individuals and major companies. This took the form of
blitzing the affected accounts with tweets trumpeting of a bit-coin scheme – or
scam, rather – that lasted just over two hours of Wednesday, July 15 from 4 PM
ET. It had actually gotten to the point that Twitter support was forced to
disable the tweeting function of a great many more accounts, not lifting the
posting ban until evening local time on 8:32 PM.
Such a brazen cyber-attack on one
of the most-used social media platforms in the world has raised all sorts of
alarm, especially considering the identities of the account-holders that were
affected by the bit-coin scam. First to be compromised was the Twitter page of
Tesla CEO Elon Musk, then that of Microsoft founder Bill Gates. Other victims
include the accounts of former US President Barack Obama, former VP (and
Democratic candidate) Joe Biden, former Mayor Mike Bloomberg of NYC, Amazon
boss Jeff Bezos, Kanye West, and corporate pages such as those of Apple and
Uber.
We are aware of a security incident impacting accounts on Twitter. We are investigating and taking steps to fix it. We will update everyone shortly.— Twitter Support (@TwitterSupport) July 15, 2020
Theories have been put forward as
to how the hacker – individual or group – managed to turn a significant portion
of Twitter into his personal machine for a bit-coin scam. One possibility is
that the perpetrator discovered a security loophole for the platforms login;
another is that he/they might have gotten access to Twitter admin privileges.
That might explain the extreme measure of the company to block tweeting
capabilities on the platform, at least for verified accounts. Twitter support
also advised that they might have had to disable password resets while they
were fixing the damages.
We’re continuing to limit the ability to Tweet, reset your password, and some other account functionalities while we look into this. Thanks for your patience.— Twitter Support (@TwitterSupport) July 15, 2020
Regarding the BTC address that
the hacker included in his spam posts, a look at the publicly-accessible
transaction records reveals that at some points the scammer has conned enough
people on Twitter to make at least $120,000 worth in bit-coin.
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