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Hackers take over prominent Twitter accounts in simultaneous attack

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Re: Hackers take over prominent Twitter accounts in simultaneous attack

#571

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.

Quite possibly this isn't a hack and someone got a Twitter admin's account, then got access to the admin panel and "all" accounts without having to hack much of anything.

If there is such a level of privilege in Twitter's stack, that says a great deal about their technology. Insiders must not be able to act as users except in prescribed ways requiring two-person control, logged and 100% audited. Glass-breaking privilege escalation should set off every pager in the company.

Re: Hackers take over prominent Twitter accounts in simultaneous attack

#572

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!

If they had full access to Twitter’s backend, they probably would be tweeting from accounts like @POTUS or @jack. But this seems like they have access to limited accounts. Most likely gained access to a third party service that allows you to manage your tweets? Edit: they tweeted from the twitter support account. Just wow. They might have actually gotten into Twitter’s systems. Edit 2: To expand on my edit above, I s…

If they target @POTUS, I believe they'd be guilty of impersonating an elected official, which would make this an even more serious crime? I dunno

Re: Hackers take over prominent Twitter accounts in simultaneous attack

#573

Twitter should suspend the entire platform until they can credibly fix this and prevent it in the future. An attacker could drop AMZN stock by 10% in minutes with just the wrong tweet from Bezos.

They just disabled tweeting from verified accounts. Right now I have more power than Elon.

They can still RT.

See here:

https://twitter.com/asculthorpe/status/1283531636450230274

@TheRegister (verified) just RT'd for help.

Re: Hackers take over prominent Twitter accounts in simultaneous attack

#577
post #219
post #152

Why isn't twitter taking its infrastructure down?

It would be cheaper for twitter to refund every person 10x what they sent than to shut down the entire site.

[citation needed]

Their reputation and the post-mortem/cleanup effort of this hack already wiped out a significant chunk of their advertising profit. Taking down the platform for one day would be a drop in the bucket in comparison.

They are causing extreme damage to lots of high-profile people's reputation every second the platform is kept active. I wouldn't be surprised if lawsuits appear as a result of this. Taking down the entire platform would be safer and would at least stop the damage.

Re: Hackers take over prominent Twitter accounts in simultaneous attack

#579

https://twitter.com/TwitterDev/status/1283068902331817990 Hmm.

If this is the case, the simple bitcoin scam might make sense as a quick way to cash in before an obvious exploit is patched? Compared to the speculation of hidden agendas at least.

I feel like a bug report might make more sense in that case though...

Re: Hackers take over prominent Twitter accounts in simultaneous attack

#580
post #569
post #541

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m guessing DMs were the real loot. The public display with the BTC diversion validates any DMs that were stolen. Otherwise blackmail targets could deny them.

If DMs were the real loot, they wouldn’t have exposed the hack by tweeting on the account.

If DMs were the real loot, the tweets were a "proof of work" (to show the accounts had really been owned).

You can prove you have 'blackmail materials' just by proving you own the bitcoin wallet.

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