Twitter employee ‘helped attackers’ perpetrate blue tick account hack
A Twitter employee was to blame for last night’s high profile hack of the social media, two sources have told Vice.
In one of the most devastating data breaches in history, hackers managed to infiltrate Twitter’s most notable blue tick accounts and send scam tweets supporting bitcoin before the social network clamped down on the breach.
According to the sources, an insider at the company took over the accounts for the hackers.
They also confirmed that the employee had been paid by the hackers to carry out the attack.
Screenshots obtained by Vice showed that the accounts had been taken over using an internal tool at the social media site.
The images show the accounts of some of the companies’ whose social media presence was taken over, including cryptocurrency firm Binance.
Many high profile figures fell victim to the breach, including Bill Gates, Elon Musk, Barack Obama and Joe Biden.
In response, Twitter to take the extreme step of preventing any blue tick accounts from tweeting while security teams responded to the bitcoin-themed hack.
The social media firm said that it was investigating the hack, as well as what other “malicious activity” may have been undertaken.
Twitter explained: “We detected what we believe to be a coordinated social engineering attack by people who successfully targeted some of our employees with access to internal systems and tools.
“We know they used this access to take control of many highly-visible (including verified) accounts and Tweet on their behalf.
“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.”