Hours after multiple high profile accounts on Twitter were hacked, Twitter said that there was ‘no evidence’ that the attackers accessed the password, and said that it did not believe customers had to reset their passwords. In total, Twitter said that 130 accounts had been targeted, and attackers were able to gain control of some of these accounts.
Bogus tweets were tweeted from the accounts from Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Mike Bloomberg and a number of tech billionaires including Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates and Tesla CEO Elon Musk. Celebrities Kanye West and Kim Kardashian West, were also hacked. The attackers sent out tweets from the accounts offering to send $2,000 for every $1,000 sent to an anonymous Bitcoin address.
In a series of tweets, Twitter said, “Out of an abundance of caution, and as part of our incident response yesterday to protect people’s security, we took the step to lock any accounts that had attempted to change the account’s password during the past 30 days. As part of the additional security measures we’ve taken, you may not have been able to reset your password. Other than the accounts that are still locked, people should be able to reset their password now.
If people’s accounts were locked,it doesn’t necessarily mean that their account was compromised or accessed, Twitter added. “So far, we believe only a small subset of these locked accounts were compromised, but are still investigating and will inform those who were affected,” it said.
“We are continuing to assess whether non-public data related to these accounts was compromised, and will provide updates if we determine that occurred,” it said.
For now, downloading Twitter data is disabled for all accounts. The site has also blocked users from being able to tweet Bitcoin wallet addresses for the time being.
The FBI has now launched an investigation after hackers hijacked Twitter accounts of a number of high-profile US figures in an apparent Bitcoin scam.
"The accounts appear to have been compromised in order to perpetuate cryptocurrency fraud," said the bureau, urging the public to be vigilant, the BBC reported on Thursday.
The US Senate Commerce committee has demanded Twitter brief it about Wednesday's incident by July 23.
The UK's National Cyber Security Centre said its officers had "reached out" to Twitter. “We would urge people to treat requests for money or sensitive information on social media with extreme caution,” it said in a statement.
With IANS inputs