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Who’s behind Wednesday’s epic Twitter hack?

krebsonsecurity.com

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Re: Who’s behind Wednesday’s epic Twitter hack?

#12

It's not a hack when an employee holds the door open and gives use of an admin management tool to a third party. Likewise, it's not a bitcoin scam when bitcoin is the method of transfer, just like it's not a US-dollar scam every other time dollars are used in theft.

Is bribery not considered a viable form of social engineering?

Where was that mentioned? This wasn't a hack. A "life hack" maybe.

Re: Who’s behind Wednesday’s epic Twitter hack?

#13
post #5

While it may sound ridiculous that anyone would be fooled into sending bitcoin in response to these tweets, an analysis of the BTC wallet promoted by many of the hacked Twitter profiles shows that on July 15 the account processed 383 transactions and received almost 13 bitcoin on July 15 — or approximately USD $117,000. This could be mostly the attackers’ own money. It’s impossible to tell, but I haven’t seen anyone…

You'd have to be a special kind of stupid to "un-wash" your own bitcoins this way.

Possibly. The only reason this would be stupid is because Bitcoin has rapidly been centralizing. I suspect many exchanges might start blacklisting any wallet that has any transactions from this wallet.

On the other hand, they can’t really do that. At that point the attackers would be able to poison any wallet just by sending a small amount of BTC to it. Therefore it seems like the only penalty is that they’d have to re-wash their coins.

Re: Who’s behind Wednesday’s epic Twitter hack?

#14

It's not a hack when an employee holds the door open and gives use of an admin management tool to a third party. Likewise, it's not a bitcoin scam when bitcoin is the method of transfer, just like it's not a US-dollar scam every other time dollars are used in theft.

Bitcoin is sort of notable vs US-dollar in that it’s significantly more of a novelty, and unlike the dollar, doesn’t have same fraud recovery path.

>unlike the dollar, doesn’t have same fraud recovery path.

You mean electronic us dollars? I doubt you'd be able to recover physical us dollars if they were scammed.

Re: Who’s behind Wednesday’s epic Twitter hack?

#15

It's not a hack when an employee holds the door open and gives use of an admin management tool to a third party. Likewise, it's not a bitcoin scam when bitcoin is the method of transfer, just like it's not a US-dollar scam every other time dollars are used in theft.

Is bribery not considered a viable form of social engineering?

I would argue that it is not.

Social engineering is when your target is unaware that what he does is wrong or will do damage.

Re: Who’s behind Wednesday’s epic Twitter hack?

#16

The among taken in this scam is chump change compared to the YouTube scammers. YouTube is a vastly bigger website than twitter and way slower to respond to accounts begin stolen by scammers. I remember seeing an Ripple giveaway scam that in a single day made 100k with just a single account ,. And fake bill gates one made 40k. the list goes on and on. My guess is the total taken is in the $3-5 million range from youtu…

What are these YouTube scams you're referring to? I'm not aware of them.

Re: Who’s behind Wednesday’s epic Twitter hack?

#17

While it may sound ridiculous that anyone would be fooled into sending bitcoin in response to these tweets, an analysis of the BTC wallet promoted by many of the hacked Twitter profiles shows that on July 15 the account processed 383 transactions and received almost 13 bitcoin on July 15 — or approximately USD $117,000. This could be mostly the attackers’ own money. It’s impossible to tell, but I haven’t seen anyone…

no, ppl really are that gullible. twitter stream showed ppl lost money

Re: Who’s behind Wednesday’s epic Twitter hack?

#18

man who falls for this stuff. i've been seeing "send me money to this account to get double that" scam for like 20 years, its hard to believe there are people who still don't know better.

I too don't understand who's technical enough to know what BitCoin is but not technical enough to understand the scam.

I think some people are possibly just sending the scammers some money for the banter? A sign of respect for the hack.

Re: Who’s behind Wednesday’s epic Twitter hack?

#19

man who falls for this stuff. i've been seeing "send me money to this account to get double that" scam for like 20 years, its hard to believe there are people who still don't know better.

yeah but add verified twitter accounts from authority figures, add nice graphics, livestreams, etc. and it is very convincing for at least enough people to keep the scams going. Twitter and YouTube have millions of users. If just a tiny fraction of them send some BTC, that is a lot of $ given how valuable BTC is.

Re: Who’s behind Wednesday’s epic Twitter hack?

#20

The among taken in this scam is chump change compared to the YouTube scammers. YouTube is a vastly bigger website than twitter and way slower to respond to accounts begin stolen by scammers. I remember seeing an Ripple giveaway scam that in a single day made 100k with just a single account ,. And fake bill gates one made 40k. the list goes on and on. My guess is the total taken is in the $3-5 million range from youtu…

And you don't even need to steal an account. When the Playstation 5 launch event was happening I searched for it on Youtube, clicked the top result and it turned out to be a scammer restreaming the real live event with graphics added saying Sony would double your BTC - just send to this address ___.
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