Twitter accounts of prominent politicians, celebrities, and technology moguls got hacked last July 15. The culprit? It includes a seventeen-year-old boy from Florida, a 19-year-old from the United Kingdom, and a 22-year-old from Orlando.
This hack has been dubbed as one of the most high-profile security breaches in years.
According to reports, the three were able to scam more than 100,000 US dollars in Bitcoin.
The scam scheme
After hacking his way to the Twitter accounts of several personalities, he was able to post bogus tweets.
The tweets mentioned about doubling every 1,000 US dollars sent to a Bitcoin address.
Some of the accounts which were hacked included:
- Barack Obama (@BarackObama)
- Joe Biden (@JoeBiden)
- Mike Bloomberg (@MikeBloomberg)
- Elon Musk (@elonmusk)
- Kanye West (@kanyewest)
- Kim Kardashian West (@KimKardashian)
Twitter's explanation on the hack
In an update of the incident released on July 18, Twitter explained that it was done through a phone spear-phishing attack.
Spear-phishing is an impersonation scam. What hackers do is they use emails to fool some recipients to handle sensitive information.
We’re sharing an update based on what we know today. We’ll provide a more detailed report on what occurred at a later date given the ongoing law enforcement investigation and after we’ve completed work to further safeguard our service. https://t.co/8mN4NYWZ3O — Twitter Support (@TwitterSupport) July 31, 2020
The explanation said, "This attack relied on a significant and concerted attempt to mislead certain employees and exploit human vulnerabilities to gain access to our internal systems." Twitter said that they are now doing their best to ensure the safety of all Twitter accounts.
We’ve significantly limited access to our internal tools and systems. Until we can safely resume normal operations, our response times to some support needs and reports will be slower. Thank you for your patience as we work through this. — Twitter Support (@TwitterSupport) July 31, 2020
The culprits of the hacking
In a report from CBS, the seventeen-year-old is mentioned to be arrested in Tampa. He is now facing 30 felony charges. The teenager will be prosecuted as an adult at the Hillsborough State Attorney's Office.
According to Hillsborough State Attorney Andrew Warren, the teen will be prosecuted in Florida as an adult in a financial fraud case. He added, "This defendant lives here in Tampa, he committed the crime here, and he'll be prosecuted here." That is even if the FBI also investigated the case of the teenager.
The two other hackers were charged in the California federal court.
The three hackers targeted 130 accounts. Among these accounts, they were able to tweet using 45 accounts. They also had access to the direct messages of the 36 accounts. There were seven accounts whose Twitter data were downloaded.
