Published 17:11 IST, July 31st 2020

Twitter says hackers used phone to fool staff, gain access

Twitter says the hackers responsible for a recent high-profile breach used the phone to fool the social media company's employees into giving them access.

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Twitter says hackers responsible for a recent high-profile breach used phone to fool social media company's employees into giving m access.  company revealed a few more details late Thursday about hack earlier this month, which it said targeted “a small number of employees through a phone spear phishing attack.”

“This attack relied on a significant and concerted attempt to misle certain employees and exploit human vulnerabilities to gain access to our internal systems,” company tweeted .  embarrassing July 15 attack compromised accounts of some of its most high profile users, including Tesla CEO Elon Musk and celebrities Kanye West and his wife, Kim Kardashian West, in an apparent attempt to lure ir followers into sending money to an anymous Bitcoin account.

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hackers targeted 130 accounts. y mand to tweet from 45 accounts, access direct mess inboxes of 36, and downlo Twitter data from seven. Dutch anti-Islam lawmaker Geert Wilders has said his inbox was among those accessed.

Spear-phishing is a more targeted version of phishing, an impersonation scam that uses email or or electronic communications to deceive recipients into handing over sensitive information.

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Twitter didn't provide any more information about how attack was carried out, saying it would provide a more detailed report later “given ongoing law enforcement investigation.”  company has previously said incident was a “coordinated social engineering attack” that targeted some of its employees with access to internal systems and tools.

17:11 IST, July 31st 2020