Twitter has just witnessed one of the biggest attacks on its platform in recent times which affected big names like Barack Obama, Elon Musk, Bill Gates, Kanye West among others. These hacked accounts were also used for a major scamming operation that used verified accounts of known celebrities to steal other Twitter users’ money.
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
At the moment, it is still uncertain how the massive hack was achieved. Although, it might be possible that a new vulnerability has been discovered within Twitter’s own systems and has been exploited. The hack affected known individuals like Joe Biden, Michael Bloomberg, Elon Musk, and even Apple as well. In a desperate move, Twitter has blocked all new tweets from every verified user, regardless of the account being compromised or not.
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Twitter Support’s official Tweet read, “We have locked accounts that were compromised and will restore access to the original account owner only when we are certain we can do so securely.” Notably, the company’s investigation into the matter had also revealed that its own internal employee tools were compromised and were used in the hack. This may be how the scammers circumvented the two factor authentication method.
The hack first began with Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s Twitter accounted tweeted out a bitcoin scam, where the money is promised to be doubled if sent to a certain account. Other verified figures like Bill Gates soon joined in with a similar tweet. Although, each of these scam tweets were deleted just as quickly as they were being sent out. We will provide more updates as the situation develops further, so stay tuned.
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