What does S mean on Snapchat?

Twitter was hacked with a coordinated social engineering attack in bitcoin scam. 

No doubt the year 2020, till now, is full of various shocking news!

Twitter, the most reliable social app, was hacked on the previous day, July 16, 2020.  The company confirmed the major security breach on Wednesday evening, about six hours later of the incident. Twitter called it a coordinated social engineering attack, and it was done to spread a cryptocurrency scam.

The verified blue ticked accounts were hacked, so can you imagine that what is the safety level of non-verified accounts!

Obama, Apple, Biden, Musk, and many other high-profile Twitter accounts were hacked.

Some of the world's most productive and most dominant politicians, celebrities, tech tycoons, and largest companies were on the attack of a massive Twitter hack. The verified accounts of Joe Biden, Jeff Bezos, Michael Bloomberg, Elon Musk, Kim Kardashian West, and Bill Gates were used to push out tweets, asking millions of followers to send money to a Bitcoin address.

The hackers posted some tweets that made clear that it all as happening to promote a cryptocurrency scam. Moreover, the accounts, including the former President of the US, Barack Obama, Kim Kardashian West, Warren Buffett, Kanye West, Jeff Bezos, and Mike Bloomberg, posted similar tweets. In which they were asking their community to send money via Bitcoin to their verified profiles and make it double.

It was seen that the messages included the address of a bitcoin wallet, and the balance of this wallet grew speedily as the scam spread. And it reached to more than 11 BTC, which is about $100,000or more. Tweets with similar posts were repetitively deleted and re-posted by some of the cooperated accounts.

The compromised accounts having millions of followers posted a series of tweets offering a definitive bitcoin scam. The followers were told that they would receive double the money in return if they transfer cryptocurrency to a specific bitcoin wallet.

The synchronized hijacking of the verified communications streams of world leaders, celebrities, and major corporate accounts was an alarming prospect. Twitter has been used for official communications by governments during emergencies. However, a hack on large scale attack could have been more disruptive or even hazardous.

According to tracking website blockchain.com, There were at least 363 transactions since the tweets were posted. However, the account has received more than $118,000.

Tim Cotten, a Bitcoin researcher, told CNN, that the first Bitcoin wallet featured in some of the tweets only became active on Wednesday. In the hours immediately after the wallet's identification number was posted to Twitter, it received more than $100,000 worth of Bitcoins through hundreds of transactions, Cotten said.

Some of that Bitcoin was then transferred to other wallets, he added.

The apparent scam has also caught the attention of the FBI.

"We are aware of today's security incident involving several Twitter accounts belonging to high profile individuals," the FBI's San Francisco field office said in a statement. "The accounts appear to have been compromised to perpetuate cryptocurrency fraud. We advise the public not to fall victim to this scam by sending cryptocurrency or money concerning this incident."

Bezos, Musk, and Gates are among the ten wealthiest people in the world, based on Forbes' calculations. According to the Associated Press, the three men have a combined worth of $362 billion.

 History of a Twitter security breach

It is not the first time Twitter has faced an insider threat. In 2017, a customer support employee briefly deleted Donald Trump's account. And in 2019, two former employees were charged with spying after they allegedly accessed thousands of users'' account information and provided it to the government of Saudi Arabia.

What Twitter has to say on its security breach?

Twitter issued its first statement approximately 90 minutes after scam messages began being sent out by Musk's and Gates'' accounts, as the attack was ongoing.

"We are aware of a security incident impacting accounts on Twitter," the company said on Twitter. "We are investigating and taking steps to fix it. We will update everyone shortly."

"We're looking into what other malicious activity they may have conducted or information they may have accessed and will share more here as we have it," the company tweeted.

"We have locked accounts that were compromised and will restore access to the original account owner only when we are certain we can do so securely," Twitter said. "Internally, we've taken significant steps to limit access to internal systems and tools while our investigation is ongoing. More updates to come as our investigation continues."

Verified accounts who attempted to tweet received an error message that read, "To protect our users from spam and other malicious activity, we can't complete this action right now."

Twitter acknowledged that some users' features might have been disabled as it investigated: "You may be unable to Tweet or reset your password while we review and address this incident."

About three hours later, Twitter Support said that "most accounts should we able to tweet again."

"As we continue working on a fix, this functionality may come and go," they tweeted. "We're working to get things back to normal as quickly as possible."

"Most accounts should be able to Tweet again. As we continue working on a fix, this functionality may come and go," Twitter said. "We're working to get things back to normal as quickly as possible."

The company said it is still investigating the breach and what other data may have been compromised.