Josh Hendrickson
The Saga of the Giant Twitter Hack continues. Twitter posted its first blog on the subject over the weekend and gave us a more in-depth insight into what happened when hackers broke into the company’s internal systems. That includes targetting 130 accounts and stealing data from 8 of those users.
In case you somehow missed it, recently hackers broke their way into Twitter’s internal tools that give the company access to user accounts. The hackers attempted to take over 130 accounts, and in this latest update, Twitter admitted that it was successful in 45 cases.
Victims include Bill Gates, Barack Obama, Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, the official Uber and Apple Twitter accounts, and others. Once the hackers had access, they tweeted out a bitcoin scam, offering to double money for anyone who sent bitcoin to a wallet. That wasn’t true, of course.
Last weekend’s security update gives us a better idea of what happened. Twitter stated that the hackers made their way into the company’s systems through employees using social engineering techniques. According to the company:
The attackers successfully manipulated a small number of employees and used their credentials to access Twitter’s internal systems, including getting through our two-factor protections.
While the bitcoin scam was one obvious outcome, Twitter found the hackers took another step with eight users. The hackers downloaded account data using the company’s “Your Twitter Data” tool available to user accounts. That’s a treasure trove on information included direct message history.
Twitter won’t say which eight accounts had their data stolen, but did clarify that none of the users in question are verified. That doesn’t mean the account itself is small, however, as many users with thousands of followers, like our own Chris Hoffman, yet lack verification.
As Twitter updates us with more information, we’ll be here to get you all the details.
Source: Twitter
