High profile Twitter accounts hacked in the US
Micro blogging site, Twitter has suffered a major attack by suspected hackers in an apparent bitcoin scam.
The attack affected high profile accounts including billionaires Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates.
The official accounts of former President Barack Obama, and Presidential hopefuls Joe Biden and Kanye West were also targeted.
In response, Twitter said it was aware of the security incident and has started investigating and taking steps to fix it.
“You may be unable to Tweet or reset your password while we review and address this incident.
“We’re continuing to limit the ability to Tweet, reset your password, and some other account functionalities while we look into this. Thanks for your patience,” Twitter said in a statement posted by its Support team.
“Most accounts should be able to Tweet again. As we continue working on a fix, this functionality may come and go. We’re working to get things back to normal as quickly as possible,” the statement added.
Below are what we know so far based on updates by Twitter:
1. Twitter said it detected what it believes to be a coordinated social engineering attack by people who successfully targeted some employees with access to internal systems and tools.
2. The hackers used this access to take control of many highly-visible (including verified) accounts and tweeted on their behalf. The company is looking into what other malicious activity the hackers may have conducted or information they may still have access to.
3. All tweets posted by the hackers from the affected accounts have been removed.
4. Twitter has also limited functionality for a much larger group of accounts, like all verified accounts (even those with no evidence of being compromised), as the investigation continues.
5. Most functionality has been restored but the company said it may take further actions and will update users if it does.
7. All compromised accounts have been locked. Access shall be restored to all original account owners only when it becomes certain that it is safe.
reacting to the incident on Thursday morning, Twitter CEO, Jack Dorsey said: “Tough day for us at Twitter. We all feel terrible this happened. We’re diagnosing and will share everything we can when we have a more complete understanding of exactly what happened.”
“Blue heart to our teammates working hard to make this right,” he added.
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