
Twitter claims âa coordinated social engineering attackâ caused one of the worldâs largest social media platforms to melt down on Wednesday after prominent celebrity profiles were used to promote a large-scale bitcoin scam.
- A mass takeover of big-name celebrities including former Vice President Joe Biden, former U.S. President Barack Obama, Kanye West and Elon Musk saw their accounts compromised, starting at 19:00 UTC.
- Twitter said in a series of tweets that hackers targeted âsome ofâ its employees who had access to internal tools, which they used âto take control of many highly visible (including verified) accounts and [t]weet on their behalf.â
- The social media platform is looking into what else was impacted, while restoring accounts to their users.
- Motherboard, VICE Magazineâs tech section, said it spoke to two sources who took over accounts, who claimed they paid a Twitter insider to manage the takeovers.
- Twitter being âhighly centralizedâ led to the hack, said Ben Sigman, CTO at blockchain startup Make Sense Labs.
- Twitter employees have âgodmodeâ access to create tweets from any user, Sigman claimed.
- Itâs worth noting all addresses are Bech32/Segwit addresses, which helps narrow down the wallet and service being used.
See also: Chainalysis Says Bitcoin Scammed From Twitter Users Is âOn the Moveâ
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