Published 18:22 IST, July 18th 2020
Twitter's high-profile accounts were targetted by young hacker friends: Report
The massive cyberattack on over a hundred Twitter accounts on July 16 reportedly involved young hackers with no links to either state or organised crime.
The massive cyberattack on over a hundred Twitter accounts, which the company called “a coordinated social engineering attack”, reportedly involved young hackers with no links to either state or organised crime. The New York Time reported on July 17 that it has interviewed at least four people who were involved in the attack which took the world by surprise and a federal police investigation is underway. The July 16 incident had started with playful messages between the hackers on the platform Discord which is a chat service popular among gamers.
The accounts that were hacked by the scammers included former US President Barack Obama, Democratic nominee for 2020 Joe Biden, Tesla CEO Elon Musk, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos among many others. The entire incident reportedly can be traced back to when Musk’s account issued a tweet at 4:17 PM ET that read - “I‘m feeling generous because of Covid-19. I’ll double any BTC payment sent to my BTC address for the next hour. Good luck, and stay safe out there!” This was soon followed by more such posts that were later deleted.
However, the newspaper said based on its interviews that the “attack was not the work of a single country like Russia or a sophisticated group of hackers”. Instead, the report added, that it was “done by a group of young people”. One of the people involved in the cyberattack lives with his mother and they got to know each other only due to their obsession with owning unique screen names that include one letter or number such as @y or @6.
The unprecedented attack has shaken the credibility of at least 130 accounts and it has triggered questions about the microblogging platform’s security because Twitter is the go-to place for politicians to make huge announcements especially when the upcoming presidential elections in the United States are just around the corner. Twitter had previously said in a statement that “for a small subset of these accounts, the attackers were able to gain control of the accounts and then send Tweets from those accounts.”
Centre issues notice to Twitter
After Twitter predicted that ‘approximately 130 accounts were targetted’ by the hackers, the Government of India has issued a notice to the social media network seeking the details of the accounts. The sources of a news agency revealed that the Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In), under the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, has asked Twitter to disclose full details of the global hack including the number of Indian users affected and breach of data. This came just a day after Maharashtra Cyber Cell issued an official advisory asking social media users to remain vigilant in the backdrop of the Twitter attack.
Updated 18:22 IST, July 18th 2020