Bill Gates, Elon Musk Twitter Accounts Hacked In “Nigerian” Bitcoin Scam

Discussion in 'other security issues & news' started by hawki, Jul 15, 2020.

  1. hawki

    hawki Registered Member

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    "Bill Gates, Elon Musk Twitter Accounts Hacked In “Nigerian” Bitcoin Scam, Over $53,000 Stolen In Minutes...

    https://nationandstate.com/2020/07/...an-bitcoin-scam-over-53000-stolen-in-minutes/

    According to the Malware Tech blog, scuttlebut is that a Twitter employee with access to the user management panel was hacked.

    https://twitter.com/MalwareTechBlog/status/1283497025472876545

    "A number of high profile Twitter accounts have been hacked to spread a cryptocurrency scam..."

    https://twitter.com/TechCrunch/status/1283504318398832640

    UPDATE:

    "So far I've seen tweets from the accounts of Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, and Kanye West. Hackers are putting back tweets as soon as account owners delete them. They've already made $103,000 in two hours."

    https://twitter.com/MalwareTechBlog/status/1283510827975245825
     
    Last edited: Jul 15, 2020
  2. hawki

    hawki Registered Member

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    "Joe Biden, billionaires and corporate accounts appear to be targeted in Twitter bitcoin hack

    The two billionaires‘ Twitter accounts both posted tweets about Bitcoin deals.


    Joe Biden, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and other high-profile Twitter accounts appeared Wednesday to be the target of organized hacks across the social media platform to offer fake bitcoin deals...

    Former president Barack Obama, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates and corporate accounts for both Uber and Apple also appeared to be targeted, and at least one Silicon Valley entrepreneur warned of a wider-spread attack. The tweets all instructed people to send cryptocurrency to the same bitcoin address..."

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/07/15/musk-gates-twitter-hack/?tidr=a_breakingnews&hpid=hp_no-name_hp-breaking-news:page/breaking-news-bar
     
  3. hawki

    hawki Registered Member

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    A review of the latest news feeds shows that the Twitter accounts hacked in this scam include the following:

    Bill Gates
    Jeff Bezos
    Elon Musk
    Tesla
    SpaceX
    Barack Obama
    Joe Biden
    Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
    YouTuber MrBeast
    Warren Buffet
    Apple
    Mike Bloomberg
    Square’s Cash App
    Uber
    Binance
    KuCoin
    Coinbase
    Litecoin's Charlie Lee
    Tron's Justin Sun
    Bitcoin
    Bitfinex
    Ripple
    CoinDesk
    Floyd Mayweather
    Kim Kardashian
     
    Last edited: Jul 15, 2020
  4. hawki

    hawki Registered Member

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    "...The hack was ongoing until approx. 6PM, with new tweets posting to verified accounts on a regular basis...

    At approx 6 PM EST Twitter took the unprecedented measure of preventing verified accounts from even tweeting at all. This would seem to be the first time Twitter has ever done this in the company’s history...

    It’s unclear how widespread the operation is, but it appears to be affecting numerous major companies and extremely high-profile individuals. That suggests someone, or a group, has either found a severe security loophole in Twitter’s login process or third-party app or that the perpetrator has somehow gained access to a Twitter employee’s admin privileges..."

    https://www.theverge.com/2020/7/15/...l-gates-twitter-hack-bitcoin-scam-compromised
     
  5. hawki

    hawki Registered Member

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  6. hawki

    hawki Registered Member

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    "...It’s not immediately known how the account hacks took place. Security researchers, however, found that the attackers had fully taken over the victims’ accounts, and also changed the email address associated with the account to make it harder for the real user to regain access..."

    https://techcrunch.com/2020/07/15/twitter-accounts-hacked-crypto-scam/
     
  7. hawki

    hawki Registered Member

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  8. hawki

    hawki Registered Member

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    "jack [dorsey, Twitter CEO]

    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.

    Blue heart to our teammates working hard to make this right.

    9:18 PM · Jul 15, 2020·Twitter for iPhone"

    https://twitter.com/jack/status/1283571658339397632
     
  9. hawki

    hawki Registered Member

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    FWIW:

    "Hackers Convinced Twitter Employee to Hijack Accounts for Them

    A Twitter insider was responsible for a wave of high profile account takeovers on Wednesday, according to leaked screenshots obtained by Motherboard and two sources who took over accounts
    ...

    'We used a rep that literally done all the work for us,' one of the sources told Motherboard. The second source added they paid the Twitter insider. Motherboard granted the sources anonymity to speak candidly about a security incident...

    According to screenshots seen by Motherboard, at least some of the accounts appear to have been compromised by changing the email address associated with them using the tool...

    Twitter has been deleting some screenshots of the panel and has suspended users who have tweeted them, claiming that the tweets violate its rules..."

    https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/...r-access-panel-account-hacks-biden-uber-bezos
     
  10. hawki

    hawki Registered Member

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    Twitter Support explanation of events:

    "Our investigation is still ongoing but here’s what we know so far:

    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.

    We know they used this access to take control of many highly-visible (including verified) accounts and Tweet on their behalf. We’re looking into what other malicious activity they may have conducted or information they may have accessed and will share more here as we have it...

    Internally, we’ve taken significant steps to limit access to internal systems and tools while our investigation is ongoing. More updates to come as our investigation continues."

    https://twitter.com/TwitterSupport/status/1283591844962750464
     
  11. guest

    guest Guest

    Twitter hacking spree alarms experts concerned about the platform's security
    July 16, 2020
    https://www.reuters.com/article/us-...ed-about-the-platforms-security-idUSKCN24H0FE
     
  12. compleo

    compleo Registered Member

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  13. hawki

    hawki Registered Member

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    "U.S. FBI is leading an inquiry into the Twitter hack

    WASHINGTON, July 16 (Reuters) - The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation is leading a federal inquiry into the Twitter hacking, two sources familiar with the situation said, after hackers seized control of accounts belonging to Joe Biden, Kim Kardashian and others in what appeared to be a bitcoin scam."

    https://www.reuters.com/article/twi...y-into-the-twitter-hack-sources-idUSL2N2EN1IK
     
  14. hawki

    hawki Registered Member

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  15. xxJackxx

    xxJackxx Registered Member

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    Bitcoin is already a scan. It probably made a few insiders rich and it enables criminals to extort ransomware fees.
     
  16. hawki

    hawki Registered Member

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    "Twitter Races to Unravel How Cyber-Attack Came From Inside

    (Bloomberg) -- As Twitter Inc. grapples with the worst security breach in its 14-year history, it must now uncover whether its employees were victims of sophisticated phishing schemes or if they deliberately allowed hackers to access high-profile accounts...

    The scale of the endeavor and its timing -- months before the November U.S. elections -- have prompted some cybersecurity experts to theorize that the attack masked a more nefarious campaign to seize sensitive data...Stas Protassov, co-founder and president of global technology firm Acronis said the attack was 'too prepared to be just a cryptocurrency scam.'

    'We don’t believe that’s all the hackers went into once they got access,' he said in an email. 'The attack is too big and too noisy and likely covering a bigger play. We’ve yet to see the full impact of what this was about.'...Tobac also raised the possibility that the attack could have been a distraction while hackers harvested private direct messages and any other confidential data to be able to deploy at a more critical time..."

    https://ca.finance.yahoo.com/news/twitter-racing-unravel-mystery-cyber-104500795.html
     
  17. compleo

    compleo Registered Member

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  18. The Hammer

    The Hammer Registered Member

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    Maybe now we'll see some intelligent and comprehendible Elon Musk posts.
     
  19. guest

    guest Guest

    Twitter Bitcoin hack targeted around 130 accounts
    July 17, 2020
    https://eandt.theiet.org/content/articles/2020/07/twitter-bitcoin-hack-targeted-around-130-accounts/
     
  20. hawki

    hawki Registered Member

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    "Hackers Tell the Story of the Twitter Attack From the Inside

    What might have been a pursuit of Bitcoin spun out of control...

    Four people at the center of the scheme spoke with The Times and shared numerous logs and screen shots of the conversations they had on Tuesday and Wednesday, demonstrating their involvement both before and after the hack became public...

    The interviews indicate that the attack was not the work of a nation-state or a sophisticated group of hackers. Instead, it was done by a group of young people — one of whom says he lives at home with his mother — who got to know one another because of their obsession with owning early or unusual screen names, particularly one letter or number, like @y or @6.

    The Times verified that the four people were connected to the hack by matching their social media and cryptocurrency accounts to accounts that were involved with the events on Wednesday. They also presented corroborating evidence of their involvement, like the logs from their conversations on Discord and Twitter..."

    [Can not be viewed in private browsing mode]

    https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/17/technology/twitter-hackers-interview.html
     
  21. guest

    guest Guest

    Read Twitter’s update on the huge hack — 8 accounts may have had private messages stolen
    July 18, 2020
    https://www.theverge.com/2020/7/18/...breach-update-july-17-your-twitter-data-theft
     
  22. guest

    guest Guest

    After This Week’s Hack, It Is Past Time for Twitter to End-to-End Encrypt Direct Messages
    July 17, 2020
    https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/...-time-twitter-end-end-encrypt-direct-messages
     
  23. Rasheed187

    Rasheed187 Registered Member

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    You see what I mean? Never rely solely on your first line of defense! These Twitter employees probably thought they were safe by using AV and firewall, and thought that the chance they would get fooled was slim to none. But this won't stop more sophisticated hackers.

    It's not clear yet how they done it, but they could have sent an email with an infected document, which installed a zero day keylogger to get credentials, and then it was game over. An anti-logger like SpyShelter or Keyscrambler could have blocked this attack, a second line of defense is always needed IMO. It could have saved Twitter from so much trouble.
     
  24. guest

    guest Guest

    An update on our security incident (July 18, 2020)
     
  25. Minimalist

    Minimalist Registered Member

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    EFF tells Twitter to encrypt DMs after hacking incident
    https://www.neowin.net/news/eff-tells-twitter-to-encrypt-dms-after-hacking-incident
     
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