High profile Twitter accounts like Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates were hacked to spread a cryptocurrency scam. Twitter tweeted that “a coordinated social engineering attack” on employees gave a hacker “access to internal systems and tools.” The investigation is still ongoing. Twitter chief executive Jack Dorsey tweeted: “Tough day for us at Twitter. We all feel terrible this happened.”
Joe Biden’s Twitter account was hacked.
They received contributions via a link
In an initial wave of scam posts, @bitcoin, @ripple, @coindesk, @coinbase, and @binance were hacked with the same message: “We have partnered with CryptoForHealth and are giving back 5000 BTC to the community,” followed by a Bitcoin link address. The link displayed in the tweets of targeted accounts received hundreds of contributions totaling more than $100,000.
Dr. Alexi Drew from King’s College London said,
Dr. Alexi Drew from King’s College London
“The latest incident highlighted the need for all major social media platforms to check their security measures, particularly in the run up to the US Presidential vote. Social media companies such as Twitter and, Facebook all have a duty to consider the damage and influence their platforms can have on the 2020 election, and I think some companies are taking that more seriously than others.”
“While this appears to be an attack on the company rather than individual users, we would urge people to treat requests for money or sensitive information on social media with extreme caution,” said the UK’s National Cyber Security Centre.
Seda Nur Cinar is the news editor of the Cloud7 News. With more than 8 years of Linux and cloud experience, Seda is a Linux and opensource enthusiast, security researcher and a web application developer.
