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Hackers take over prominent Twitter accounts in simultaneous attack

coindesk.com

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Re: Hackers take over prominent Twitter accounts in simultaneous attack

#981

Post by Madzen__ »

madmulita wrote: post #980
jsnell wrote: post #133

Just what kind of an operation is Twitter running here? It seems crazy that they don't have any kind of anti-abuse system in place that could just block tweets with this specific Bitcoin address or possibly tweets matching the regexp of any Bitcoin address. I.e. limit the damage and buy a couple of hours while they try to find the root cause. (Yes, yes, staged rollouts. But anti-abuse systems don't work by those rule…

They might be too busy renaming all their 'master' branches.

Couldnt add the address to blacklist either, they had to find the denylist.

Re: Hackers take over prominent Twitter accounts in simultaneous attack

#982

Post by ilaksh »

GordonS wrote: post #334
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.

Keeping in mind the attackers will not be able to perform this stunt again though the same attack vector, It could also simply be that the attackers overestimated how much they would make from this attack.

I think they have proven that it works with thousands of YouTube videos with the same scam and basically the same operating mode (impersonating famous people). They have made quite a lot of money.

So they are probably on at least their second attack vector by now.

I mean, who knows, based on the massive number of imposter YouTube stream BTC giveaway scams, this might be a whole sub-industry in India by now. Similar to fake virus scams etc.

Re: Hackers take over prominent Twitter accounts in simultaneous attack

#983

Post by abetteramerica »

So, does no one think this was China doing a 'we can do what we want when we want' as a response to Trump's executive order the day before this happened? And if it is, would they be honest about the cause since that would require a response and likely an escalation?

Re: Hackers take over prominent Twitter accounts in simultaneous attack

#984

Post by slantaclaus »

hharlequin wrote: post #456
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.

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.

Based off the NYT article on the stunt this morning, I believe you are correct. It was a social engineering hack. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/15/technology/twitter-hack-b...

Re: Hackers take over prominent Twitter accounts in simultaneous attack

#985

Post by hacker_newz »

e79 wrote: post #974

A lot of people are asking “why a bitcoin scam?” From what we know right now, targeted accounts had their emails and 2FA reset via an admin tool. These attacks were noisy, so the window of opportunity for the attacker was small. The attack was launched after hours, likely to limit the chance that the compromised Twitter employee would be around. So market manipulation wasn’t really a great option. This was basically…

After hours for who?

Re: Hackers take over prominent Twitter accounts in simultaneous attack

#986

Post by C1sc0cat »

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.

Isn't a bit to high profile - the perps risk attracting the attention people a bit more serious than overworked police fraud squads

Re: Hackers take over prominent Twitter accounts in simultaneous attack

#987

Post by blauditore »

Funnily enough, the Tweet made me immediately think whoever wrote it speaks French natively. In French grammar, there needs to be space before any punctuation with exactly two parts (e.g. ":", "!", or "?"), and it's a common error for French-natives to do the same in English.

Re: Hackers take over prominent Twitter accounts in simultaneous attack

#988

Post by chadlavi »

withinrafael wrote: post #537

Verified Twitter user here: Locks [1] are in place, attempting to tweet throws an error: Something went wrong, but don't fret -- let's give it another shot. At the bottom of the page, a notification appears: This request looks like it might be automated. To protect our users from spam and other malicious activity, we can't complete this action right now. Please try again later. [1] https://twitter.com/TwitterSupport/…

I'm an unverified nobody and the same thing happened to me, was unable to tweet up until about 8pm EDT.

Re: Hackers take over prominent Twitter accounts in simultaneous attack

#989

Post by C1sc0cat »

VectorLock wrote: post #718
hharlequin wrote: post #456

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

After one incident of insider account tampering their entire response was "we must protect Donald Trump's account."

If you do that to a head of state its very visible and leads to major changes.

Same as when a journalist in the UK got a temp job in BT's office in Edinburgh and looked up the queens unlisted phone numbers at Balmoral - lead to a major security incident and massive changes.

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