Twitter's massive hack could be even worse than it seems -

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But whereas the scope of the incident was massive in its personal proper — impacting accounts belonging to Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Bill Gates, Elon Musk, Kanye West, Kim Kardashian West and Warren Buffett — it could merely be the tip of a really giant iceberg with huge safety implications. Cybersecurity consultants and policymakers now fear that the bitcoin rip-off could masks a way more troubling information breach involving the non-public communications of the world’s strongest folks.

The FBI mentioned Thursday it is now investigating the incident.

The assault is a stark reminder, in the midst of a pivotal election yr, concerning the energy of social media basically, and Twitter (TWTR) particularly, to destabilize America and the world. Despite it having a considerably smaller consumer base than rivals like Facebook (FB), Twitter has a disproportionately giant affect on the media, traders and policymakers. It’s the place information breaks, CEOs make business announcements and US presidents generally declare new insurance policies. And Wednesday’s assaults confirmed how a lot belief the general public locations in Twitter’s arms, and the way brittle its techniques can be.

It nonetheless is not clear what the attackers’ final targets have been. But what little has been revealed concerning the hack thus far has already raised severe considerations from policymakers, safety consultants and a few near Twitter. With the extent of entry they loved, the hackers could have triggered a sell-off within the monetary markets, issued faux coverage pronouncements or disrupted total presidential campaigns.

“If Ivanka [Trump’s] account were to tweet the extreme hypothetical, ‘I’m so proud of my father tonight for making the hard decisions; nuclear war is never easy, but we’ll win it,’ that would … be problematic,” mentioned an ex-Twitter worker, talking on situation of anonymity to debate a former employer.

Neither Ivanka Trump nor President Donald Trump’s account appeared to have been affected by the hack; the White House declined to touch upon the matter Wednesday afternoon. White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany mentioned Wednesday that Dan Scavino, Director of Social Media on the White House, has been in “constant contact” with Twitter during the last 18 hours to maintain the president’s account safe.

“The president will remain on Twitter,” McEnany instructed the press confirming that the president’s account was by no means hacked and stays safe.

Others in DC, together with one of many president’s sons, have been nonetheless struggling to submit on the platform Thursday because of sweeping and drastic measures Twitter took to lock down many accounts, together with all verified ones. Twitter later relaxed the measure, however as of Thursday afternoon, accounts belonging to Virginia Democratic Sen. Mark Warner and Donald Trump Jr. remained unable to tweet.

On Wednesday night, Twitter provided a preliminary clarification for the hack. It blamed a “coordinated social engineering attack” in opposition to a few of its workers who had entry to “internal systems and tools,” Twitter said.

The hackers then “used this access to take control of many highly-visible (including verified) accounts and Tweet on their behalf,” Twitter added. “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.” Twitter declined to remark for this story.

The hackers who managed the accounts posted faux tweets urging Twitter customers to ship cash to quite a lot of bitcoin wallets, promising that customers would be paid again double. Instead, the hackers appeared to easily take the cash and run — with more than $116,000 flowing into the wallets by Thursday morning. All bitcoin transactions are seen on a public ledger, making the hack an even higher spectacle.

Those wallets will be perpetually radioactive as legislation enforcement eyes them for withdrawals or transfers that could be traced again to the unique attackers, mentioned Kenn White, a safety principal on the software program database firm MongoDB.

“Those [bitcoin] addresses will be scrutinized closer than any in history,” he mentioned.

For such a disruptive hack, the cash concerned pales compared to the type of million-dollar payouts hackers can routinely count on from different kinds of financially motivated assaults. In addition to being comparatively small in monetary phrases, the earnings from this week’s Twitter assault are insignificant in mild of how deeply the hackers seem to have penetrated Twitter’s techniques.

“If you’ve stolen a Ferrari, why just drive around the block?” White mentioned.

As the disaster unfolded Wednesday night time, Missouri Republican Sen. Josh Hawley, a significant critic of Silicon Valley, despatched a letter to Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey.

“Millions of your users rely on your service not just to tweet publicly but also to communicate privately through your direct message service,” Hawley wrote. “A successful attack on your system’s servers represents a threat to all of your users’ privacy and data security.”

The Federal Trade Commission can also be more likely to examine — opening the door to potential fines or different penalties, in accordance with David Vladeck and Jessica Rich, two former administrators of the company’s client safety bureau.

Twitter’s personal investigation remains to be ongoing, and it is not clear what information the hackers could have accessed. Twitter additionally hasn’t disclosed who could have been behind the assault or any details about the focused workers. Two US intelligence officers instructed CNN Wednesday night time that it remains to be too early to inform if the assault was the work of a nation state or a state-sponsored actor.

But some safety consultants are bracing for the worst. By utilizing the hijacked accounts to push a bitcoin rip-off, the attackers publicly marketed their profitable assault — guaranteeing that Twitter would swiftly reply and lock them out, mentioned Theresa Payton, the previous White House chief data officer below President George W. Bush.

While that could point out nothing extra than a play for notoriety and a fast money seize, she mentioned, the hackers could have downloaded details about the accounts for later launch — doubtlessly together with personal messages, pictures, cellphone numbers and e-mail addresses. That would be damaging sufficient at any time, however throughout a crucial election yr during which belief in platforms and their dealing with of knowledge stay key considerations, the stakes could not be larger.

“Are they going to come back later with a ‘dump and dox’ campaign or a blackmail situation?” mentioned Payton. “We only know about the accounts they flipped with that message. How about all the other accounts they didn’t flip with that message?”

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