The hackers who ran a cryptocurrency scam using high-profile, verified Twitter accounts, including those belonging to Joe Biden, Apple, Bill Gates, Uber and Barack Obama, accessed the direct messages (DMs) of 36 accounts and downloaded account data from eight accounts via “Your Twitter Data.”
There is no indication that the DMs of any former or current elected official, other than one Dutch politician, was accessed and Twitter doesn’t believe that the attackers saw any private information “for the vast majority of people” whose accounts were targeted, the company said in an update.
Twitter acknowledged that last week’s attack was the result of a “coordinated social engineering campaign” involving multiple employees.
The attackers, who could see email addresses and phone numbers, couldn’t see previous account passwords, which are not stored in plain text. Nor are they available through the tools the hackers used in the attack, the company said, noting that an ongoing investigation is trying to determine if the perpetrators had been able to view additional information associated with the impacted accounts.
Despite a swirl of speculation over the nature of the attack and the actors behind it – ranging from a coordinated nation-state attack to politically motivated hijinks to a smokescreen or practice run for a more profound attack – Allison Nixon, chief research officer at Unit 221B, knew who Twitter was likely dealing with.
“The moment I learned they went after one-letter accounts [those affiliated with elite users], I knew it was the OGuers [original gangsters],” Nixon told SC Media of the fraud community she’s tracked for years.
“Few on the internet invest in that,” she s ..
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