One of the most mystifying social media security breach took place on the Twitter platform on Wednesday morning. The breach targeted Twitter’s top-notch high profile voices including the U.S. Presidential candidate Joe Biden, billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk, reality television star Kim Kardashian, rapper Kanye West, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, and the former U.S. President Barack Obama.
Early morning on Wednesday, Twitter accounts of Barack Obama, Bill Gates, Kanye West, Uber, and Apple, posted similar tweets urging people to donate cryptocurrency to a bitcoin address. Take a look at some of the tweets which Twitter took down after the incident.
Even after two hours of the first wave of this high profile security breach, Twitter officials did not disclose the cause behind it. However, taking cognizance of the situation, Twitter took an astonishing step by protecting other verified eminent accounts from being hacked.
Surprising as it may sound, this is not the first time a social media security breach shook Twitter. In fact, last year the account of Twitter chief executive Jack Dorsey was hacked. However, the extensive nature of this attack suggests a broad access to internal controls.
Rachel Tobac, CEO of SocialProof Security, says “This is massive. This is most likely the largest attack I’ve ever seen. We are lucky that these attackers are monetarily motivated and not sowing mass chaos all over the world.”
Another major step was taken by the world’s first bitcoin billionaire Cameron Winklewoss, hours after the security breach. With his tweet following the bitcoin donation statement made from Elon Musk’s Twitter handle, he urged the unsuspecting people to not fall into the hackers trap.
This is a SCAM, DO NOT participate! This is the same attack/takeover that other major crypto twitter accounts are experiencing. Be vigilant! Situation is ongoing.https://t.co/2k9U3PpnKm
— Cameron Winklevoss (@winklevoss) July 15, 2020
To break the chain of hacking, Twitter on Wednesday afternoon shut down its platform. Due to this, various verified accounts were unable to post any tweets. However, Twitter later on Wednesday night allowed the verified accounts to post tweets again, but warned that the “functionality may come and go.”
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
We also limited functionality for a much larger group of accounts, like all verified accounts (even those with no evidence of being compromised), while we continue to fully investigate this.
— Twitter Support (@TwitterSupport) July 16, 2020
Twitter executive chief, Jack Dorsey called it a “tough day” for the social media platform. He later tweeted that the company is “diagnosing and we will share everything we can when we have a more complete understanding of exactly what happened.”
Tough day for us at Twitter. We all feel terrible this happened.
We’re diagnosing and will share everything we can when we have a more complete understanding of exactly what happened.
💙 to our teammates working hard to make this right.
— jack (@jack) July 16, 2020
Our investigation is still ongoing but here’s what we know so far:
— Twitter Support (@TwitterSupport) July 16, 2020
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
Can Twitter be Blamed for this Money Heist?
The bitcoin scams have been a tenacious pest on the Twitter platform for the past year. What currently haunts the entire world is how easily the verified accounts of eminent figures were hijacked. Does that indicate that there is a problem in the security blanket offered by Twitter to its users?
The security breach led to a collection of nearly 12.9 bitcoins at the end of Wednesday. The total value of these amounts to slightly more than $114,000 (nearly INR 86 lakhs). However, FBI and cyber security experts are relieved that the damage was only monetary.
With so much power within the fingertips of the cyber-attackers, a lot more harm could’ve been inflicted. But it is clear that the attackers were just looking to make some quick cash. They knew that the operation wouldn’t last long. So, this was basically a “smash and grab” opportunity for them.
Whatever might be the motive behind this social media hijack, it’s going to be an arduous journey for the cyber-crime officials to catch the culprit. You can never predict how a devil’s mind might work, and this real life “money heist” is a true example of the same. However, this incident has taught Twitter a salutary lesson, and hopefully, the social media platform will soon tighten up its security via requisite measures.
