This Wednesday something huge happened with the social media platform, Twitter. The site was hacked by multiple creators and used the accounts of major companies and individuals to create a bitcoin scam generating almost $120,000. It was one of the biggest massive hacks the site has ever faced in its history. Officials from the FBI have taken the matter seriously and have addressed deeper concerns regarding online theft. The site evaluated its security and privacy issues and has raised suspicion on the matter. Tweets from verified accounts were instantly locked fearing another fraud attempt.
The unfortunate hack invaded the accounts of the previous president of US Obama, Elon Musk, Joe Biden, Kanye West, Michael Bloomberg, Bill Gates, Apple, and many more. However, one notable incident from the hack was from the account of President Trump, though it’s unsure whether an attempt was made to invade his account since there special protection programs on his account ever since with was invaded in 2017. The matter remains a mystery of who is/are behind this massive hack, the search still goes on.
Twitter wouldn’t be resuming back verified accounts until proved they are securely handled and the site’s system privacy has been double-checked. The hackers hadn’t made access to private information such as passwords but definitely targeted a total of 130 verified accounts to spread-out this scam, among which a ‘small subset’ was under the control of the attackers. Commenters realized the accounts were hacked and reacted against it bringing attention to Twitter’s authorities. Certain accounts that weren’t under the attack list are also locked due to this reason.
On Wednesday evening, the company revealed that its own internal employee tools were compromised and used in the hack, which may explain why even accounts that claimed to have two-factor authentication were still attempting to fool followers with the bitcoin scam.
Trying to recover and mitigate the loss that has occurred, we must point out to the fact that the platform’s security did have its loopholes in one way or the other that made it evitable for hackers to access. It is possible to make ‘God Mode’ necessary with much stricter policies and restrictions in order to avoid such mishaps in the future so that even an internal employee may find it hard to crack the system. Because at the end of the day, the users’ data and information run around these websites freely that can be accessed and misused as well if the perpetrator has evil intentions. We are lucky matters didn’t go far and was been able to stop on time.
