An internal investigation by Twitter showed that hackers, with the help of several employees, were able to
At the same time, Twitter believes that the hacking was madenot a professional hacker group. According to them, four young men who did not work together are behind the attack. Two hackers told the New York Times that they had a leader, but his motives are unknown. They were able to access the company's private Slack, where employees shared sensitive data.
"We believe the attackers targetedcertain Twitter employees using social engineering techniques. What does it mean? In this case, social engineering was the deliberate manipulation of people in order to force them to take certain actions and find out confidential information."
Twitter press release
On July 15, 2020, unknown persons gained access toa large group of verified Twitter accounts. The purpose of the hacker attack is to promote fraudulent operations with bitcoins. Among the hacked accounts were the accounts of Microsoft founder Bill Gates, SpaceX and Tesla CEO Elon Musk, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, former US President Barack Obama, rapper Kanye West, and many others.
In the first hours after the attack, the deceived people sent over $ 118,000 to the hackers. It can also be assumed that the attackers could have gained access to a large number of confidential messages.
See also:
- Look at the huge “wall” of hundreds of thousands of galaxies behind the Milky Way
- Comet NEOWISE is visible in Russia. Where to see her, where to look and how to take a photo
- NASA and ESA publish the most detailed image of the Sun