Hackers take over prominent Twitter accounts in simultaneous attack • Hacker News Board

Re: Hackers take over prominent Twitter accounts in simultaneous attack

#241

Post by mc32 » Wed, Jul 15, 2020, 9:40 PM UTC

iamben wrote: post #7

Elon Musk as well. Tweets still up, saying "Feeling greatful, doubling all payments sent to my BTC address! You send $1,000, I send back $2,000! Only doing this for the next 30 minutes." As of now, 121 people have sent cash totally more than 2.5BTC. Edit: Just seen @BillGates compromised as well, same bitcoin account. Edit 2: Elon's tweet seems to be getting removed, and then reposted again shortly after. About $40k…

Joe Biden too. “He was ‘giving back to the community’” if you sent him money. They tailored the messages pretty well, I have to say.

Bezos “was maxing out at 50MM”!!

Re: Hackers take over prominent Twitter accounts in simultaneous attack

#242

Post by lqet » Wed, Jul 15, 2020, 9:40 PM UTC

neurostimulant wrote: post #144

With so many accounts compromised, the hackers might actually have full access to Twitter's backend. The postmortem would be very interesting. I'll be looking forward to it. Imagine if the hackers timed the intrusion during github outage, and twitter's employees can't deploy a fix for the exploit fast enough because github was down!

> Imagine if the hackers timed the intrusion during github outage, and twitter's employees can't deploy a fix for the exploit fast enough because github was down!

Is Twitter really using GitHub internally (even self-hosted)?

Re: Hackers take over prominent Twitter accounts in simultaneous attack

#243

Post by jacquesm » Wed, Jul 15, 2020, 9:40 PM UTC

neurostimulant wrote: post #144

With so many accounts compromised, the hackers might actually have full access to Twitter's backend. The postmortem would be very interesting. I'll be looking forward to it. Imagine if the hackers timed the intrusion during github outage, and twitter's employees can't deploy a fix for the exploit fast enough because github was down!

It may be that the github outage is related. Too many companies rely on 3rd party hosted services for their deployment workflow. Even ones you really would not expect.

Re: Hackers take over prominent Twitter accounts in simultaneous attack

#244

Post by PatrolX » Wed, Jul 15, 2020, 9:41 PM UTC

Twitter is seriously out of control.

They should have pulled the plug an hour ago, and that plug pulling should have been automated.

If this were something even more sinister a whole country could have plummeted into chaos, death, destruction.

Re: Hackers take over prominent Twitter accounts in simultaneous attack

#245

Post by badwolf » Wed, Jul 15, 2020, 9:41 PM UTC

tomp wrote: post #112

ISL wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They haven't yet gone after the most prominent Twitter user.

Would be too obvious. Noone believes what that account tweets anyway.

They got Joe Biden and Barack Obama's

Re: Hackers take over prominent Twitter accounts in simultaneous attack

#246

Post by anigbrowl » Wed, Jul 15, 2020, 9:41 PM UTC

I've seen the groundwork for this over the last 6-8 weeks, with 'people' (questionable-looking accounts) retweeting screenshots of similar-looking tweets purporting to be from Elon Musk, and other similarly fishy accounts going 'wow it really works' or the like. I noticed them showing up consistently in replies to Trump tweets, probably just because they get tons of engagement.

Re: Hackers take over prominent Twitter accounts in simultaneous attack

#247

Post by noobmax » Wed, Jul 15, 2020, 9:41 PM UTC

I believe someone twitter admin users account was hacked who maybe has access to tweet anything from anyone's account. Twitter passwords/system is safe IMO.

Re: Hackers take over prominent Twitter accounts in simultaneous attack

#248

Post by jf- » Wed, Jul 15, 2020, 9:42 PM UTC

This is nuts, Twitter is totally compromised and they haven’t pulled the plug. Not confidence inspiring.

Re: Hackers take over prominent Twitter accounts in simultaneous attack

#249

Post by Wingman4l7 » Wed, Jul 15, 2020, 9:42 PM UTC

davidlee1435 wrote: post #162

Kudos to Coinbase- I tried sending a small amount to the account after seeing Elon Musk's tweet, and Coinbase prevented the transaction from occurring.

I'm betting Gemini also blacklisted that BTC address, especially considering that they were in the first wave of fake tweets.

Now I'm wondering how much BTC the attacker effectively left on the table by reusing the same wallet address, especially considering that lots of people who deal in crypto use just a handful of exchanges to send it.

Re: Hackers take over prominent Twitter accounts in simultaneous attack

#250

Post by jacquesm » Wed, Jul 15, 2020, 9:42 PM UTC

kristofferR wrote: post #208

vmception wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

probably a social media manager api keys

No way, it's way too widepread and would be shut down by now. Elon Musk, Barack Obama and Wiz Khalifa just tweeted the scam again this very minute, more than an hour since it started. This is backend access, Twitter can't figure out how to shut it down.

They could have shut these bitcoin giveaway scams down with a single regex a year ago when they first showed up. They let them go and this is the price they will pay. Let's see if someone is going to sue Twitter because 'verified' to be Bill Gates is meaningless now.