Twitter says total hackers targeted 130 accounts and managed to access 45 of them thanks the use of tools only accessible to internal support teams
.
Among these hacked accounts were those of politicians, such as the Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden, former President Barack Obama, but also big bosses like Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, Elon Musk, the boss of Tesla. or Bill Gates, the founder of Microsoft.
From hacked accounts, the perpetrators sent enticing messages inciting subscribers to send bitcoins, a cryptocurrency, in exchange for twice the amount sent.
According to specialized sites that record bitcoin exchanges, but do not allow the recipients to be traced, some 100,000 dollars have been sent.
Twitter said on Saturday that for eight of these accounts, the hackers also downloaded data that is normally only available to the account owner.
None of these accounts were verified, that is to say endowed with the distinctive little “v” which increases their credibility and gives certain privileges to users.
Twitter also said that thanks to the tools they had taken control of, hackers managed to cross the barrier of double authentication, which normally makes it possible to secure an account beyond a simple password.
This spectacular action, on which federal police (FBI) launched an investigation, sparked a debate on the security of social platforms a few months before the November presidential election in the United States, but also on the possible consequences if hackers manage to take over the account of Donald Trump, who often leads his diplomacy on Twitter, where it has 83.5 million subscribers.
–
