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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

#731

Everyone here is suggesting a monetary motive. Maybe there's a political motive--someone who really hates Twitter or serves to benefit if Twitter suffers.

And this is how you make that happen? I can think of at least 400 ways off the top of my head of doing that without involving BTC or $$.

Re: Hackers take over prominent Twitter accounts in simultaneous attack

#732

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…

The Twitter backend is probably heavily sprinkled with statements like `account_handle match { case "therealdonaldtrump" => throw new TrumpNotAllowedException("can't do"); }`

Especially after the last insider account tampering event.

Re: Hackers take over prominent Twitter accounts in simultaneous attack

#734

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

They hack thousands of accounts and make national news, I doubt they are that worried. They probably just don't have access or they would have.

Re: Hackers take over prominent Twitter accounts in simultaneous attack

#735
post #83
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.

The SEC would be able to trace the trades, and the person would be busted. Bitcoin allows them to remain anonymous.

Re: Hackers take over prominent Twitter accounts in simultaneous attack

#736

The scammer's address: https://www.blockchain.com/btc/address/bc1qxy2kgdygjrsqtzq2n...

$110k received so far in btc.

I refuse to believe there are people who can be aware of BTC enough to go out of their way to even obtain some, and then fall for a scam like this...

Re: Hackers take over prominent Twitter accounts in simultaneous attack

#737

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!

Totally agree, backend - Musk's tweets being deleted and popping up again before our eyes was a dead giveaway. It could be SQL injection writing tweets directly to the database for all we know. I agree with everyone else saying the site should be pulled. Incredibly sketchy.

Write through caches would need to send the tweets through the normal channels for them to 'fan out' instead of writing directly to MySQL. But essentially what you're saying about possible backend compromise.

Re: Hackers take over prominent Twitter accounts in simultaneous attack

#738

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It "feels" like an insider attack (simultaneous compromise of lots of high value accounts) but I agree, it will make for a fascinating post mortem if one is produced.

Hmm, how much money this scam would potentially generates? I think the salary of an engineer working on twitter would be higher given how fast this scam would be shut down. Would a twitter employee risk their career to this scam?

I would be surprised if it were an engineer, but not everyone who is employed would be an engineer. When I was at Google two fairly high profile incidents were enacted by contractors (one in the IT "TechStop" group and one a data center tech)

Re: Hackers take over prominent Twitter accounts in simultaneous attack

#739
post #661

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 makes way more sense than any of the other suggestions in HN.

DMs are almost worthless; who uses DMs for anything important? It's for contacting people you kinda know but not really. State secrets aren't transitted over DM, but not because people wouldn't be stupid enough to do it. the people holding them are much older than the demographic that uses Twitter DMs. Worst case with DMs is some new YouTuber drama would be exposed.

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