Gates, Musk, Apple: hackers hacked Twitter accounts of celebrities and large companies

Hackers hacked celebrity Twitter accounts and offered to transfer bitcoins to them, writes Air force. During the time that messages remained on the pages of public people and large companies, ordinary users managed to transfer more than $ 100 thousand to the scam accounts.

Photo: Shutterstock

Twitter accounts of many famous people underwent large-scale hacking on Wednesday evening, July 15. Unknown hackers posted messages of the same type offering them to earn bitcoins.

“All bitcoins sent to the address below will be returned in double size. If you send 1000 dollars, I will return 2000 dollars. I’ve been doing this only for 30 minutes, ”read businessman Ilon Musk on a Twitter message.

The message was pinned and hung at the very top of the feed for several minutes, after which it was deleted. Users joked in the comments and noted that what was written was most likely fake. As he writes iXBTDespite this, many still decided to try their luck. The total amount of transfers in a few minutes exceeded 100 thousand dollars.

Similar messages appeared in the accounts of billionaire and Microsoft founder Bill Gates, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, rapper Kanye West, former U.S. President Barack Obama, Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and many other famous people, and also large companies, including Apple and Uber. On the Apple page, after hacking, messages disappeared.

Photo: Twitter / Apple screenshot

As the securitylab.ru, an unprecedented hack Twitter could be implemented using internal tools. Cybercriminals who claimed responsibility for the incident could bribe a social network employee.

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Judging by the same tweets, the attacks on the pages of the "stars" were coordinated. After some time, the Twitter administration discovered malicious activity and blocked the ability to publish to the owners of verified accounts. Hacker messages have been deleted.

Photo: twitter.com/TwitterSupport screenshot

Photo: twitter.com/TwitterSupport screenshot

Although Twitter does not specify how exactly the cyber attacks were carried out, Motherboard reports that screenshots are exchanged with cybercrime circles with internal social network administration tools. It was with their help that attackers could hack stellar accounts by resetting email accounts and then recovering passwords.

Motherboard reporters even managed to talk with cybercriminals responsible for hacking. According to them, they paid an employee of Twitter, so that with the help of internal tools, he changed the email to which celebrity accounts were linked.

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Whether this was actually the case is not known for certain. However, the near-simultaneous hacking of multiple accounts protected by two-factor authentication suggests that the attackers didn't just hack individual user accounts—they had at least indirect access to Twitter's internal tools.

Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey was hacked a year ago. Hackers posted abusive racist statements on his account. Then the company said that the incident occurred due to a hole in the security system of the mobile operator. Presumably, hackers gained access to the Dorsey account by changing the SIM card.

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