More than a Hundred Twitter Accounts Target by Cyber Attack
Social networking giant, Twitter, announced yesterday that a cyber-attack targeted around 130 user accounts. As a result, users on the platform felt some shock, after learning about the incident regarding the accounts of prominent personalities and even organizations.
The technology company had a breach due to hackers who accessed its internal systems to control said accounts.
Among the hacked users were former President Barack Obama, Tesla CEO Elon Musk, and US Presidential Candidate Joe Biden.
Celebrities like American rapper Kanye West and TV reality star Kim Kardashian were targets of the attack too.
They hacked the accounts of prominent businessmen such as Jeff Bezos, Warren Buffet, and Bill Gates. Lastly, they also hijacked the majority of accounts of major corporations like Uber Technologies and smartphone giant Apple.
According to recent technology news reports, the hackers used the accounts to solicit digital currencies.
In Twitter’s latest statement, it said that cyber groups have acquired control over a “small subset” of their target accounts.
The social networking company then said that it will continue to investigate whether the hackers attained private information.
Aside from that, Twitter ensured the account owners that it will be working with them to solve the breach.
Sources say that the FBI’s San Francisco division is now leading the investigation about the matter. And lawmakers from Washington are calling for an accounting of how the attack happened.
The law enforcement agency said that, upon initial investigations, the cyber attackers were part of a cryptocurrency fraud incident. Public blockchain records found that the scammers received over $100,00 worth of cryptocurrencies.
Extra Protections
They hijacked a lot of high-profile accounts. However, surprisingly, the US President Donald Trump’s account wasn’t one of them.
One of the most famous Twitter users was spared from the attack and users are now speculating on why. One theory floating around right now is that maybe the president has implemented extra safety measures to his account.
Modern technology drove communication and information dissemination to new speeds. And social media platforms have been a staple for politicians and public figures.
A recently published report said that two anonymous sources claim that Trump’s account has more protections after “past incidents”.
Sometime in the past, a rogue Twitter employee deactivated his Twitter account in November 2017. Reports say that the employee was already on his last day of work and that they reactivated Trump’s account a few minutes later.
A day after that incident, the company announced that it will be implementing safeguards to prevent these kinds of situations. However, the company didn’t further elaborate on that and it was not addressed again.
