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

Re: Hackers take over prominent Twitter accounts in simultaneous attack

#361

Post by staycoolboy » Wed, Jul 15, 2020, 9:59 PM UTC

BiteCode_dev wrote: post #260

Given how huge this hack is, and how little the BTC reward is going to be, I'm tempting to think this is either: - a test of a new hacking system - a demonstration to a big client - a first shot to threat some entity - a diversion while they get the real loot And that the BTC messages are just a way to justify it so it looks like a simple scam. Such a hack is worth way, WAY more than the few BTC it could bring.

I can't imagine the user's devices were targeted (e.g. Obama's cell phone), so this must be internal. Eff me.

Re: Hackers take over prominent Twitter accounts in simultaneous attack

#362

Post by lgl » Wed, Jul 15, 2020, 9:59 PM UTC

PatrolX wrote: post #244

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.

Which really puts into perspective the amount of power we have placed on social media. I wonder if this will spark a #deletetwitter movement?

Re: Hackers take over prominent Twitter accounts in simultaneous attack

#363

Post by aqme28 » Wed, Jul 15, 2020, 9:59 PM UTC

arrmn wrote: post #324

aqme28 wrote: post #263

About $110k in the address. Honestly not that impressive for a hack of this scale. I wonder what they could have gotten if they reported this for a bug bounty instead. Or as Matt Levine said, "if I got Elon Musk's twitter password I'd wait until market hours to use it."

According to their hacker one program they pay $7,700 for account takeover exploits

Sounds like they need to adapt to market conditions.

Re: Hackers take over prominent Twitter accounts in simultaneous attack

#364

Post by Narretz » Wed, Jul 15, 2020, 9:59 PM UTC

whoisjuan wrote: post #158

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!

And it seems that it's still compromised. Tweets get deleted and then they re-appear.

30 minutes later and it still happens, just after "Elon" posted a normal message. Hopefully most users have caught on to the scam by now.

Re: Hackers take over prominent Twitter accounts in simultaneous attack

#365

Post by Scoundreller » Wed, Jul 15, 2020, 9:59 PM UTC

mekkkkkk wrote: post #332

Is it just me, or does this seem suspiciously poorly thought out? Perhaps there is a second stage involving stock plays. The BTC thing might be a diversion. Or we are incredibly lucky and the exploit was found by people with really bad foresight and imagination.

Or it's been exploited for months/years to read people's DMs and private accounts and they decided to burn it now mostly for lolz?

Re: Hackers take over prominent Twitter accounts in simultaneous attack

#366

Post by madeofpalk » Wed, Jul 15, 2020, 9:59 PM UTC

VikingCoder wrote: post #185

Watch this turns out to be a JS dependency tree problem from some library that was compromised months ago in some NPM module, used in the twitter web interface.

Given the Twitter web interface is just an client of the Twitter semi-public API, I highly doubt this is it.

Re: Hackers take over prominent Twitter accounts in simultaneous attack

#367

Post by dsr12 » Wed, Jul 15, 2020, 9:59 PM UTC

Twitter support tweeted: "We are aware of a security incident impacting accounts on Twitter. We are investigating and taking steps to fix it. We will update everyone shortly."

Re: Hackers take over prominent Twitter accounts in simultaneous attack

#368

Post by gowld » Wed, Jul 15, 2020, 9:59 PM UTC

scottmf wrote: post #268

maxcan wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly, we should be relieved if thats all that was stolen. A more sophisticated attack would involve OTM puts on TSLA and a tweet along the lines of: "finding major defects in Ys and 3s. shutting down all lines to reconfigure for a week" That could have netted the attackers millions.

My crazy theory: the real attack is on the Twitter stock price and the bitcoin is a distraction.

Then why not go big and hack @realDonaldTrump?

Re: Hackers take over prominent Twitter accounts in simultaneous attack

#369

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Jul 15, 2020, 10:00 PM UTC

maxcan wrote: post #83

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…

Honestly, we should be relieved if thats all that was stolen. A more sophisticated attack would involve OTM puts on TSLA and a tweet along the lines of: "finding major defects in Ys and 3s. shutting down all lines to reconfigure for a week" That could have netted the attackers millions.

[deleted]

Re: Hackers take over prominent Twitter accounts in simultaneous attack

#370

Post by sleepybrett » Wed, Jul 15, 2020, 10:00 PM UTC

zelly wrote: post #307

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!

There is no way Twitter depends on Github CI/CD to push updates. I refuse to believe this.

If they did, they would be running the self hosted option.