Internet crimes are something the world is aware of. However, when social media handles of the most prominent international personalities are hacked, it becomes a challenge for platforms such as Twitter. After the twitter handles of Elon Musk, Barrack Obama, Jeff Bezos, Wiz Khalifa, Kanye West, Joe Biden, Michael Bloomberg, and Apple, among others, were hacked, Twitter has restricted access of real owners to their accounts.
While the aforementioned accounts are still visible, Twitter has barred them for tweeting and in a statement, it said, "You may be unable to tweet or reset or password as of now, while we review the incident."
Seeking Transfer of Bitcoin
The hacker, who is reportedly known as 'Kirk', started hacking all Twitter accounts on Wednesday evening. It is uncertain whether 'Kirk' is a group or a single person. Minutes after Musk and other listed victims were unable to access their tweets, posts on their handles read "All Bitcoin sent to the address mentioned, will be sent back to you doubled. bc1qxy2kgdygjrsqtz."
In fact, Twitterati interested in Bitcoin began transferring money, and minutes after SpaceX's Elon Musk's account displayed the message, the address specified was receiving the money. Over $120,000 has been raised until now as Twitter is verifying the flaw in its system that led to the disaster. The social networking giant confessed late on Wednesday evening that the hacker had defected with its employees and it is an engineering flaw not caused, but created.
Using The 'Faces' of Prominent Personalities
The messages by the hacker in all these accounts were clear and loud— it sought money on behalf of prominent personalities such as Musk, Obama, Biden, Bezos and more like them are. One of the messages read: "We are going to give back to our community and we support Bitcoin. All bitcoin sent to the address below will be sent back to you doubled," the note on Apple's official twitter handle claimed and further added, "Only going on for next 30 minutes."
A spokesperson of Binance (cryptocurrency exchange platform) said, "Our security team in thoroughly probing the coordinated breach and attack on the crypto industry." Meanwhile, another tweet by the hacker on the account of Bill Gates read, "You send me $1,000 dollars, I send you back $2,000". A series of such tweets demanding individuals to invest in the mentioned address of bitcoin was posted till late Wednesday.
However, Twitter swiftly suspended these high profile accounts and suspended all activity. Also, Cameron Winklevoss who was the first investor in Bitcoin to be the billionaire in 2017, tweeted: "This is a SCAM, DO NOT participate! This is the same attack/takeover that other major crypto twitter accounts are experiencing. Be vigilant! Situation is ongoing."
Another person named Jack with over four million followers on Twitter posted, "We're diagnosing and will share everything we can when we have a more complete understanding of exactly what happened." Jack's bio on Twitter reads #Bitcoin...
Twitter Re-assessing Its Security
In the meantime, Twitter is analyzing what went wrong with its administrative tools that led to them falling prey to cybercrimes. It also said, "We detected what we believe to be a coordinated social engineering attack by people who successfully targeted some of our employees with access to internal systems and tools."
A detailed probe is still underway, while Twitter is trying to trace the node from where the hacks began. While the accounts have been restored, complete access has not been granted yet, owing to the investigation that is still in progress.
