Twitter says hackers ‘manipulated’ staff to access 130 accounts

Twitter was hacked on Wednesday, with posts soliciting bitcoin tweeted from the accounts of Joe Biden, Elon Musk, Apple, Kanye West and Barack Obama

The social media company said hackers reset passwords and tweeted from 45 accounts, while personal data of up to eight users was downloaded

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Published: 8:30pm, 18 Jul 2020Updated: 8:34pm, 18 Jul 2020

Twitter has revealed that hackers “manipulated” some of its employees to access accounts in a high-profile attack on the social media company, including those of Democratic presidential challenger Joe Biden and tech entrepreneur Elon Musk.

“We know that they accessed tools only available to our internal support teams to target 130 Twitter accounts,” said a statement posted on Saturday on the company’s blog.

For 45 of those accounts, the hackers were able to reset passwords, login and send tweets, it added, while the personal data of up to eight unverified users was downloaded.

Posts trying to dupe people into sending hackers bitcoin were tweeted by the official accounts of Apple, Uber, Kanye West, Bill Gates, Barack Obama and many others on Wednesday.

More than US$100,000 worth of the virtual currency was sent to email addresses mentioned in the tweets, according to Blockchain.com, which monitors cryptocurrency transactions.

Twitter locked down affected accounts and removed the fraudulent tweets. It also locked accounts not affected by the hack as a precaution. Most of those have now been restored, Twitter said on Saturday.

The New York Times on Friday reported the attack was carried out by a group of young friends with no links to a foreign state or organised crime.

The paper said it interviewed four people who took part in the hacking, who shared logs and screenshots backing up their accounts of what happened.