Hackers used credentials of some employees to access our internal systems: Twitter on Bitcoin scam

NEW DELHI, Jul 18, 2020, ToI. Social media giant Twitter on Saturday said that cyber attackers targeted some of its employees through a social engineering scheme and used their credentials to access its internal systems for hacking multiple accounts in the Bitcoin scam, The Times of India reported.

“We believe attackers targeted certain Twitter employees through a social engineering scheme. They manipulated a small number of employees and used their credentials to access Twitter’s internal systems, including getting through our two-factor protections,” Twitter said in a statement.

Unidentified hackers targeted Twitter accounts of over 130 high profile technology moguls, politicians, celebrities and major companies on July 16.

The company also said that hackers were able to download account information for up to 8 accounts involved in the hack of its systems this week and were able to reset passwords and take control of 45 of them and tweet from those accounts too. However, it said none of them were verified accounts.

The cybercriminals sent bogus tweets from people like Joe Biden, Barack Obama, Mike Bloomberg and tech billionaires and companies, including Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates and Elon Musk, Apple and Uber, offering to send $2,000 for every $1,000 sent to a bitcoin address.

According to cyber security firms, at least 367 users transferred around $1,20,000 (over Rs 90 lakh) to hackers within two hours of the attack.

Twitter further noted that it was holding back some of the details of the attack as it continues its investigation and reiterated that it was working with impacted account owners.

(With agency inputs)