Twitter was hacked pretty big time on Wednesday as blue-check accounts (and even a few missing the mighty blue check) were unable to tweet, retweet, or change passwords. Gotta be honest, this editor laughed quite a bit watching Joe Biden, Barack Obama, and Elon Musk simultaneously hit people up for bitcoin.
Shockingly, people fell for it as the hackers were able to raise over 100k in bitcoin.
Right?
Seems the blue-check lockout was done so Twitter could investigate what was happening:
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
You may be unable to Tweet or reset your password while we review and address this incident.
— Twitter Support (@TwitterSupport) July 15, 2020
And here’s where it gets scary.
Ok, scarier:
We detected what we believe to be a coordinated social engineering attack by people who successfully targeted some of our employees with access to internal systems and tools.
— Twitter Support (@TwitterSupport) July 16, 2020
Targeted their employees? Huh.
Twitter just became a National Security Risk.
— Grummz (@Grummz) July 16, 2020
Seriously.
Hackers Convinced Twitter Employee to Hijack Accounts for Them – VICE https://t.co/q2JGIdvhgQ
— Tammy Bruce (@HeyTammyBruce) July 16, 2020
Sounds like the employees weren’t so much ‘targeted’:
From Vice:
A Twitter insider was responsible for a wave of high profile account takeovers on Wednesday, according to leaked screenshots obtained by Motherboard and two sources who took over accounts.
On Wednesday, a spike of high profile accounts including those of Joe Biden, Elon Musk, Bill Gates, Barack Obama, Uber, and Apple tweeted cryptocurrency scams in an apparent hack.
“We used a rep that literally done all the work for us,” one of the sources told Motherboard. The second source added they paid the Twitter insider. Motherboard granted the sources anonymity to speak candidly about a security incident. A Twitter spokesperson told Motherboard that the company is still investigating whether the employee hijacked the accounts themselves or gave hackers access to the tool.
No big whoop.
*eeeeeek*
But wait, there’s more!
There always is …
BREAKING: Alleged leaked pictures from the Twitter admin control panel that was compromised showcase the buttons ‘Trends Blacklist’ and ‘Search Blacklist’, indicating Twitter DOES have the ability to shadowban it’s users.
— Mike Coudrey (@MichaelCoudrey) July 16, 2020
OMG WE’RE SHOCKED.
Ok, not really.
UPDATE: Twitter is now removing and deleting images of the admin control panel from its website. pic.twitter.com/ljrpvvmNQz
— Mike Coudrey (@MichaelCoudrey) July 16, 2020
Because OF COURSE THEY ARE.
These hackers could have created a political crisis and a global panic.
We should be grateful that they were merely greedy and not ideological.
— Frank Grimes. Unknown sympathizer o conservatives. (@USympathizer) July 16, 2020
The question y'all should be asking is do hackers have confidential information that will help for or against presidential election later in the year. What more do they have in their hands
— UnDisputed (@_____Nuel) July 16, 2020
The hack heard ’round the world?
Stay tuned.
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