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

Re: Hackers take over prominent Twitter accounts in simultaneous attack

#671

Post by toofy » Wed, Jul 15, 2020, 11:30 PM UTC

hn3333 wrote: post #438

baxtr wrote: post #356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even worse? How about POTUS declares war on China thru twitter? OMG, I just realized how dumb that would have been to say back in 2016. But these days?

That's assuming Tweets actually serve an actual diplomatic function and are not merely marketing/propaganda for voters. (Also POTUS is not authorized to declare any wars btw.)

They can seemingly do most acts which occur in war, as long as they don’t officially declare it.

I mean, when is the last time we officially declared war? It has to have been decades ago.

Re: Hackers take over prominent Twitter accounts in simultaneous attack

#672

Post by Sebb767 » Wed, Jul 15, 2020, 11:31 PM UTC

css wrote: post #661

blisseyGo wrote: post #634

Tweet from TwitterDev team yesterday: https://twitter.com/TwitterDev/status/1283068902331817990 > 2 days to go… #TwitterAPI https://twitter.com/TwitterDev/status/1283433096780677122 > Thank you to all of you who have engaged with us and shared your feedback. Your input has been vital, and we’re committed to continuing these conversations with you. There’s so much more we’re doing to build a better #TwitterAPI… and Ea…

Or someone making one last use of an exploit on the old API, since ostensibly there is a day to go before the new API is released on the public net.

This might actually explain the simple scam nature. Setting up more complex monetisation, i.e. by shorting a company, takes quite a while, especially if you don't want to be tracked. A bitcoin scam is quick and simple to do. And it's not _too_ illegal (compared to, for example, stock manipulation), so the attacker will probably catch less heat.

Re: Hackers take over prominent Twitter accounts in simultaneous attack

#673

Post by aazaa » Wed, Jul 15, 2020, 11:32 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.

In time you may come to view this as a bug, not a feature.

Re: Hackers take over prominent Twitter accounts in simultaneous attack

#674

Post by blablafd » Wed, Jul 15, 2020, 11:32 PM UTC

Thanks BTC which make it true! BTC is the only thing that is totally useless and harmful!

Re: Hackers take over prominent Twitter accounts in simultaneous attack

#675

Post by Sebb767 » Wed, Jul 15, 2020, 11:32 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!

I'm just glad the fallout from this isn't nuclear, to be honest.

Re: Hackers take over prominent Twitter accounts in simultaneous attack

#676

Post by zmmmmm » Wed, Jul 15, 2020, 11:32 PM UTC

FanaHOVA wrote: post #111

rvz wrote: post #76

Uber has been hacked as well. At this point, they can get any high profile Twitter user. EDIT: You know this is a coordinated Twitter hack when they have Apple's account hacked [0]. https://twitter.com/Apple/status/1283506278707408900

I'm guessing a social media manager application got compromised, or an exploit in Twitter's API that allows you to post as someone else. It's hard to see all these different accounts falling for the same scam + not having 2FA, etc.

Surely any individual client would have had their api keys immediately blocked. It would have to be more like a compromise of, say, the API key back end that allows them to surveil logins over a period of time, and the accounts we are seeing hacked is what they scraped.

Re: Hackers take over prominent Twitter accounts in simultaneous attack

#677

Post by xwdv » Wed, Jul 15, 2020, 11:32 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.

This is the route I would have taken, but not with OTM puts. It’s far easier to let the stock tank, then buy up calls knowing that the reason is bullshit, and wait for the price to recover and sell.

You will blend in perfectly because you have an alibi for why you are buying so many TSLA calls.

And when you buy an OTM put, it’s hard to predict what a good price would be exactly. How far do you think the stock would drop? With a call you could be fairly more confident it will return to a previous level.

That said, this kind of attack requires you to have a good amount of capital on hand, so you need to be a fairly independently wealthy hacker.

Re: Hackers take over prominent Twitter accounts in simultaneous attack

#678

Post by epanchin » Wed, Jul 15, 2020, 11:36 PM UTC

lesderid wrote: post #462

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

This would be sweeter if TwitterDev was now compromised.

Re: Hackers take over prominent Twitter accounts in simultaneous attack

#679

Post by miguelmota » Wed, Jul 15, 2020, 11:37 PM UTC

admn2 wrote: post #617

miguelmota wrote: post #190

Hackers still actively tweeting out from everyone's accounts https://twitter.com/search?q=All%20Bitcoin%20sent%20to%20the...

is it just me or are they now mass altering users' names? https://twitter.com/search?q=bc1qxy2kgdygjrsqtzq2n0yrf2493p8...

At this point people are only doing it for trolling reasons

Re: Hackers take over prominent Twitter accounts in simultaneous attack

#680

Post by zmmmmm » Wed, Jul 15, 2020, 11:37 PM UTC

css wrote: post #661

blisseyGo wrote: post #634

Tweet from TwitterDev team yesterday: https://twitter.com/TwitterDev/status/1283068902331817990 > 2 days to go… #TwitterAPI https://twitter.com/TwitterDev/status/1283433096780677122 > Thank you to all of you who have engaged with us and shared your feedback. Your input has been vital, and we’re committed to continuing these conversations with you. There’s so much more we’re doing to build a better #TwitterAPI… and Ea…

Or someone making one last use of an exploit on the old API, since ostensibly there is a day to go before the new API is released on the public net.

That actually makes the most sense to me. Even makes me wonder about whether it could be an insider leak - someone who knows of an unadvertised exploit that has been patched internally and sold it at the last minute or something.