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Hackers concerned within the high-profile hijacking of Twitter accounts earlier this week had been younger friends with no hyperlinks to state or organised crime, The New York Times reported Friday. The assault, which Twitter and federal police are investigating, began with a playful message between hackers on the platform Discord, a chat service well-liked with avid gamers, in accordance with the Times. The paper stated it had interviewed 4 individuals who participated within the hacking, who shared logs and screenshots backing up their accounts of what occurred.
“The interviews indicate that the attack was not the work of a single country like Russia or a sophisticated group of hackers,” the Times reported.
“Instead, it was done by a group of young people – one of whom says he lives at home with 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 large hack of high-profile customers from Elon Musk to Joe Biden has raised questions on Twitter’s safety because it serves as a megaphone for politicians forward of November’s election.
“Based on what we know right now, we believe approximately 130 accounts were targeted by the attackers in some way as part of the incident,” Twitter stated in a tweet.
“For a small subset of these accounts, the attackers were able to gain control of the accounts and then send Tweets from those accounts.”
Posts attempting to dupe folks into sending hackers the digital foreign money bitcoin had been tweeted by the official accounts of Apple, Uber, Kanye West, Bill Gates, Barack Obama and plenty of others on Wednesday.
Twitter stated it gave the impression to be a “coordinated social engineering attack by people who successfully targeted some of our employees with access to internal systems and tools.”
‘Original Gangster’ accounts
Fraudulent posts, which had been largely deleted, stated folks had 30 minutes to ship $1,000 in cryptocurrency bitcoin, promising they’d obtain twice as a lot in return. More than $100,000 value of bitcoin was despatched to e-mail addresses talked about within the tweets, in accordance with Blockchain.com, which screens crypto transactions.
The younger hackers interviewed by the Times stated a mysterious person who glided by the title “Kirk” initiated the scheme with a message and was the one with entry to Twitter accounts.
They contended they had been solely concerned in commandeering lesser-known Twitter accounts, notably to swipe coveted quick handles akin to an “@” signal and single letters or numbers that might simply be bought, in accordance with the report.
The younger hackers maintained they stopped serving as middlemen for “Kirk” when high-profile accounts grew to become targets.
Some hackers are “obsessed” with hijacking “Original Gangster” social media accounts staked out within the companies’ early days which have quick profile names, in accordance with Brian Krebs of Krebs on Security.
“Possession of these OG accounts confers a measure of status and perceived influence and wealth in SIM swapping circles, as such accounts can often fetch thousands of dollars when resold in the underground,” Krebs stated in a submit.
Hackers concerned within the assault on Twitter marketed account names at an OGusers.com web site, asking for fee in bitcoin, in accordance with the Times report.
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