FBI leads probe into attack on high-profile Twitter accounts to commit cryptocurrency scam

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is reportedly leading the probe into attack on Twitter accounts of high-profile individuals including former US President Barack Obama, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, and SpaceX founder Elon Musk. The federal investigators had said that the hackers appeared to commit cryptocurrency fraud after taking control of political figures, businessmen, and celebrities.

The serious breach prompted lawmakers to raise alarms about future attacks to spread misinformation to meddle in elections or disrupt the stock market. US Senator Ed Markey said in a statement that the country needs strong cybersecurity standards to protect Americans from scams and misinformation.

Tweets from several high-profile accounts emerged within minutes on July 16, requesting donations in cryptocurrency with a promise that the donors will receive double the amount in return. According to media reports, over $100,000 worth of Bitcoins was scammed from users during the security attack.

Read: Twitter Hack: Maharashtra Cyber Asks Social Media Sites To Be Alert

'Social engineering attack'

Twitter Inc said that it believes the hacking was a coordinated “social engineering attack” as they successfully targeted some of the employees with access to internal systems and tools. The hackers used the access to take control of many highly-visible and verified accounts and tweet on their behalf. 

After further investigation, the social media giant said that around 130 accounts were targeted by the attackers and a “small subset” of these accounts were used by them to send tweets. Twitter is still assessing whether non-public data related to these accounts were compromised. In the early phase of assessment, Twitter had limited the functionality for a much larger group of accounts, even those with no evidence of being compromised.

Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey tweeted after the attack that it was a "tough day" for everyone at workplace, pledging to share "everything we can when we have a more complete understanding of exactly what happened". The firm is assessing longer-term steps that it may take and will share more details as soon as possible.

Read: What Are Blue Checks On Twitter? Why Were Verified Accounts Unable To Post On Wednesday?