The attack on celebrity Twitter accounts is primarily used to defraud Bitcoin. But the attackers also get access to private data. However, according to Twitter, piquant details from the life of Obama or Kanye West should not be included. A first lead to the perpetrators leads into the gamer scene.
During the hacker attack on Twitter, the attackers also got access to the private information of the affected accounts. With up to eight profiles, they would have downloaded the complete data, reports the US company. But the attackers had not succeeded in making the big coup, at least when it came to data theft: It should not have been verified accounts – none of the celebrities like ex-President Barack Obama or Tesla boss Elon Musk should be affected.
Twitter is always the target of cyberattacks, but so many prominent accounts have never been hijacked at once. The company said some employees had been "tampered with" and the attackers could use their login information to gain access to the company's internal systems. A total of 130 accounts had been targeted by the hackers, 45 had managed to reset the password, log in and send tweets.
The attackers could have viewed personal information such as email addresses and phone numbers – and possibly other information as well. The investigations continued, one says Blog entry from Twitter. The successful hacker attack was particularly alarming because the attackers managed to break into the service's internal systems and thereby send messages from the verified profiles that were considered to be trustworthy.
Did "Kirk" incite young gamers to attack?
The starting point could have been a chat between gamers: Four hackers, who could have been at least partially involved, apparently turned to the US newspaper "New York Times" and gave insights into the course of the attack. The idea came to them during a casual chat on the gamer platform Discord. The alleged hackers stated that the Bitcoin idea came from an internet user with the pseudonym "Kirk", who also initiated the hacker attack. They just hacked into the accounts of lesser-known Twitter users, they told the newspaper. When the accounts of well-known personalities became the target of the attack, they turned away from "Kirk". According to the report, the four involved are supposed to be young people: one of them stated that they still lived with their mother.
In the unprecedented Twitter hack, a Bitcoin scam was advertised on the hijacked accounts on Wednesday: Users were allegedly called on by US presidential candidate Joe Biden, Microsoft founder Bill Gates or Amazon boss Jeff Bezos to send in cryptocurrency with the promise to repay the amount twice. Hoping for the big win, users followed the call and transferred bitcoins worth more than $ 100,000.
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