- The extraordinary hacking spree
that hit Twitter, targeting some of the most high profile
accounts, is drawing urgent questions about the platform's
security and resilience.
The company said late Wednesday that hackers took control
of employee credentials to hijack the accounts of some
of the most prominent political and business figures in the US,
from Barack Obama and Joe Biden to Bill
Gates and Warren Buffett.
In a series of tweets, the company said, quote,
"we detected what we believed to be
a coordinated social engineering attack by people who
successfully targeted some of our employees
with access to internal systems and tools."
The company's statement confirmed the fears of security
experts that the service itself, rather than
users, had been compromised.
Posing as celebrities and the wealthy,
those responsible for the attack asked followers to send Bitcoin
to a series of addresses.
MIKKO HYPPONEN: I don't think this particular attack has
any links to foreign nations.
- Mikko Hypponen, a cybersecurity expert,
says what the hackers chose to do with their access tells us
a lot about who they could be.
MIKKO HYPPONEN: Remembering they could do anything on Twitter,
they chose to use these quick hack mechanisms of making
a little bit of Bitcoin.
They could have sold this access to a number of places--
for example, to foreign intelligence agencies.
They could have used this access to announce a merger
and acquisition in the name of Bill Gates or Elon Musk,
which would have immediately affected stock prices.
This was most likely an opportunistic hack,
most likely done by some younger people.
And this was the first thing they could imagine
to make some money with.
- Wednesday's hack, the worst to date for Twitter,
is also raising questions about Twitter's resilience
in the run-up to the US presidential election.
Its role as a key communications platform for politicians
and public officials, including President Donald Trump,
has led to fears hackers could wreak havoc
with the November election or otherwise
compromise national security.
After the day's chaos, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey said quote,
"tough day for us at Twitter.
We all feel terrible this happened."