Looking forward, what can we expect from similar types of hackers?
Last week’s hack of high-profile Twitter accounts belonging to Joe Biden, Barack Obama, Bill Gates and others raises questions about who carried out the attack, why it was done and what it means for the future of democracy. A few days in, researchers are calling it more of an amateurish stunt than a professionally engineered, long-con takedown. The hack did successfully scam hundreds of Twitter users out of an estimated $120,000 in bitcoin. But it could have been worse. The level of access they had — direct messages of influential world leaders and organizations — was priceless. The hackers had to have known that the Twitter security team would be all over the situation once they launched their tweets. So this was a one-shot opportunity that, if executed more shrewdly, could have netted millions.
It doesn’t appear to be a professionally engineered ploy to land a king’s ransom. The hack did successfully scam hundreds of Twitter users out of an estimated $120,000 in bitcoin. But it could have been worse. The level of access they had — direct messages of influential world leaders and organizations — is priceless. The hackers had to have known that the Twitter security team would be all over the situation once they launched their tweets. So this was a one-shot opportunity that, if executed more shrewdly, could have netted millions.
At a surface level, it appears their goal was to show off, get some attention, have a little fun, and walk away with a pocket full of cash in the end.
Then again, they could have a longer-term play. If the attackers h ..
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