Not Russia, simply a group of young hackers in charge of Twitter attack: NYT
Hackers involved in the high-profile hijacking of Twitter accounts earlier this week were young pals without links to convey or organized crime, The New York Times reported Friday.
The attack, which Twitter and federal police are investigating, started with a playful message between hackers on the platform Discord, a chat service favored by gamers, in line with the Times.
The paper said it had interviewed four persons who participated in the hacking, who shared logs and screenshots burning their statements of what happened.
“The interviews indicate that the attack had not been the work of a single country like Russia or a advanced band of hackers,” the days reported.
“Instead, it had been done by several young people-one of whom says he lives aware of his mother-who got to know one another because of their obsession with owning early or unusual screen names, particularly one letter or number, like @y or @6.”
The massive hack of high-profile users from Elon Musk to Joe Biden has raised questions about Twitter’s security since it serves as a megaphone for politicians before November’s election.
“Based on what we realize at this time, we believe approximately 130 accounts were targeted by the attackers in some way as part of the incident,” Twitter said in a tweet.
“For a tiny subset of the accounts, the attackers could actually gain control of the accounts and send Tweets from those accounts.”
Posts trying to dupe persons into sending hackers the virtual currency bitcoin were tweeted by the official accounts of Apple, Uber, Kanye West, Bill Gates, Barack Obama and many more on Wednesday.
Twitter said it were a “coordinated social engineering attack by people who successfully targeted some of our employees with usage of internal systems and tools.”
‘Original Gangster’ accounts
Fraudulent posts, which were largely deleted, said people had 30 minutes to send $1,000 in cryptocurrency bitcoin, promising they would receive twice as much in return.
A lot more than $100,000 worth of bitcoin was delivered to email addresses mentioned in the tweets, according to Blockchain.com, which monitors crypto transactions.
The young hackers interviewed by the days said a mysterious user who passed the name “Kirk” initiated the scheme with a note and was the main one with access to Twitter accounts.
They contended these were only involved in commandeering lesser-known Twitter accounts, particularly to swipe coveted short handles such as an “@” sign and single letters or numbers that could easily be sold, according to the report.
The young hackers maintained they stopped serving as middlemen for “Kirk” when high-profile accounts became targets.
Some hackers are “obsessed” with hijacking “Original Gangster” social media accounts staked out in the services’ start that contain short profile names, according to Brian Krebs of Krebs on Security.
“Possession of the OG accounts confers a way of measuring status and perceived influence and wealth in SIM swapping circles, as such accounts could fetch thousands when resold in the underground,” Krebs said in a post.
Hackers mixed up in attack on Twitter advertised account names at an OGusers.com website, requesting payment in bitcoin, in line with the Times report.
Source: www.deccanchronicle.com
