The hackers who orchestrated an impressive attack on the accounts of celebrities and politicians on Twitter "successfully manipulated a small number of employees" of the platform, as the company announced today.
Twitter said that the hackers targeted a total of 130 accounts and managed to "break" 45 of them, using "tools available only to the internal support team".
Among other things, hackers hacked into the accounts of Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden, former President Barack Obama, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, Tesla owner Elon Musk and Microsoft founder Bill Gates. Through these accounts they sent messages inviting users to send them bitcoin, promising to double their money.
According to specialized websites that track bitcoin transactions but do not record the recipients, about $ 100,000 was sent this way.
According to Twitter, in eight of these accounts the hackers also managed to download data to which normally only the account owner has access.
The shocking cyberattack, which has been investigated by the FBI, sparked a debate in the United States about the security of social networking sites, just months before the November presidential election. Many are also wondering what the possible consequences would be if the hackers managed to get into the account of President Donald Trump, who often announces his policy via Twitter and has 83.5 million followers.
It is recalled, however, that the @realdonaltrump account was not among those hacked.
