Hackers involved in the Twitter attack announced account names on an OGusers.com website.
San Francisco, United States:
The hackers involved in the hijacking of Twitter accounts earlier this week were young friends unrelated to state or organized crime, the New York Times reported Friday.
The attack, which Twitter and the federal police are investigating, began with a playful message between hackers on the Discord platform, a popular chat service for gamers, according to the Times.
The newspaper said it had interviewed four people who had participated in the hacking, who had shared newspapers and screenshots to back up their accounts of what had happened.
“Interviews indicate that the attack was not the work of a single country like Russia or of a sophisticated group of hackers,” the Times reported.
“Instead, it was done by a group of young people – one of whom says he lives at home with his mother – who got to know each other because of their obsession with having early or unusual pseudonyms , especially a letter or number, like @y or @ 6. “
Elon Musk’s massive hack of high-level users from Joe Biden raised questions about Twitter security as it serves as a megaphone for politicians before the November elections.
“Based on what we currently know, we believe that approximately 130 accounts were targeted by attackers in one way or another in connection with the incident,” Twitter said in a tweet.
“For a small subset of these accounts, the attackers were able to take control of the accounts and then send Tweets from these accounts.”
Posts trying to trick people into sending virtual currency bitcoin to hackers were tweeted by official accounts from Apple, Uber, Kanye West, Bill Gates, Barack Obama, and many others on Wednesday.
Twitter said it was a “coordinated social engineering attack by people who successfully targeted some of our employees who have access to internal systems and tools.”
‘Original Gangster’ Accounts
The scam articles, which have been largely removed, said that people had 30 minutes to send $ 1,000 in cryptocurrency bitcoins, promising that they would receive twice as much in return.
Over $ 100,000 worth of bitcoins have been sent to the email addresses mentioned in the tweets, according to Blockchain.com, which monitors cryptographic transactions.
The young hackers interviewed by The Times said that a mysterious user named “Kirk” had launched the program with a message and was the one who had access to Twitter accounts.
They claimed they were only involved in requisitioning lesser-known Twitter accounts, in particular to scan for coveted short handles such as an “@” sign and simple letters or numbers that could easily be sold, according to The report.
The young hackers claimed that they had stopped serving as intermediaries for “Kirk” when prominent accounts became targets.
According to Brian Krebs of Krebs on Security, some hackers are “obsessed” with hijacking “Original Gangster” social network accounts staked in the early days of services that have short profile names.
“The possession of these OG accounts confers a measure of status and influence and wealth perceived in the SIM card exchange circles, because these accounts can often bring in thousands of dollars when they are sold underground”, said Krebs in an article.
Hackers involved in the Twitter attack announced account names on an OGusers.com website, requesting payment in bitcoin, according to the Times report.
(With the exception of the title, this story was not edited by GalacticGaming staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
