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All hell broke loose on Twitter late Wednesday afternoon thanks to a sitewide hack perpetrated by a group of hackers who’d reportedly paid off a Twitter employee for access to the social media network’s back-end control panel tools.
Using these tools, the hackers commandeered the accounts of several high-powered blue checkmark figures — including former President Barack Obama and presumptive Democrat presidential nominee Joe Biden — and used them to trick unsuspecting followers into sending them Bitcoin payments.
Observe:
BREAKING – Twitter account of Barack Obama #hacked. pic.twitter.com/CNI7OVp5El
— Disclose.tv 🚨 (@disclosetv) July 15, 2020
BREAKING – Joe Biden’s account has just been #hacked pic.twitter.com/8GE2ijJzq3
— Disclose.tv 🚨 (@disclosetv) July 15, 2020
Accounts hacked by Bitcoin scammers:
– Bill Gates
– Elon Musk
– Joe Biden
– Warren Buffett
– Kanye West
– Michael Bloomberg
– Apple
– Uber
– Jeff Bezos
– Barack Obama
– Benjamin Netanyahu— The Spectator Index (@spectatorindex) July 15, 2020
Twitter promptly responded by disabling the ability of all blue checkmark accounts from tweeting as it investigated the matter further.
“While the hackers appear to be after bitcoin, the fact that this appears to be a sitewide — and ongoing — incident is a huge cause for concern beyond the bitcoin theft. Considering that President Trump uses Twitter to announce national policy, the thought of a compromised Trump account is terrifying,” Mashable reported.
“The move to turn off tweeting for verified accounts seems like a blunt tool to prevent the hackers from causing further damage, and potentially hacking more people, such as Trump. However, it’s also left the celebrities, journalists, comedians, and generally verbal people of the world with a lot of pent up quips amid a historic digital crisis.”
Twitter eventually resolved the matter and re-enabled blue checkmark accounts around 9:00 pm late Wednesday evening.
Statements soon followed from Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey and Twitter’s official “Support” account:
Tough day for us at Twitter. We all feel terrible this happened.
We’re diagnosing and will share everything we can when we have a more complete understanding of exactly what happened.
💙 to our teammates working hard to make this right.
— jack (@jack) July 16, 2020
Our investigation is still ongoing but here’s what we know so far:
— Twitter Support (@TwitterSupport) July 16, 2020
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.
— Twitter Support (@TwitterSupport) July 16, 2020
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.
— Twitter Support (@TwitterSupport) July 16, 2020
Once we became aware of the incident, we immediately locked down the affected accounts and removed Tweets posted by the attackers.
— Twitter Support (@TwitterSupport) July 16, 2020
We also limited functionality for a much larger group of accounts, like all verified accounts (even those with no evidence of being compromised), while we continue to fully investigate this.
— Twitter Support (@TwitterSupport) July 16, 2020
This was disruptive, but it was an important step to reduce risk. Most functionality has been restored but we may take further actions and will update you if we do.
— Twitter Support (@TwitterSupport) July 16, 2020
We have locked accounts that were compromised and will restore access to the original account owner only when we are certain we can do so securely.
— Twitter Support (@TwitterSupport) July 16, 2020
Internally, we’ve taken significant steps to limit access to internal systems and tools while our investigation is ongoing. More updates to come as our investigation continues.
— Twitter Support (@TwitterSupport) July 16, 2020
At 9:24 pm, Sen. Josh Hawley, a big proponent of eliminating the Section 230 protections enjoyed by tech giants like Twitter, posted a public letter to Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey demanding further answers for the unprecedented hack.
“I am concerned that this event may represent not merely a coordinated set of separate hacking incidents but rather a successful attack on the security of Twitter itself. As you know, millions of your users rely on your service not just to tweet publicly but also to communicate privately through your direct message service. A successful attack on your system’s servers represents a threat to all of your users’ privacy and data security,” he wrote.
.@jack @Twitter work with the FBI and DOJ to secure your platform. Now. Then give the public an accounting of how much of their personal info you lost today pic.twitter.com/Yn2q4Yr8Xx
— Josh Hawley (@HawleyMO) July 16, 2020
Shortly thereafter, Vice magazine’s Motherboard confirmed that the hackers behind the attack had paid off a Twitter employee for access to an internal control panel.
“A Twitter insider was responsible for a wave of high profile account takeovers on Wednesday, according to leaked screenshots obtained by Motherboard and two sources who took over accounts,” the outlet reported.
Included in its report were screenshots of the panel:
As images of the panel spread, the scandal took a new direction as Twitter users realized the panel contained a “Trends Blacklist” button. Twitter had long claimed that it doesn’t “shadow-ban” or “blacklist” trends. Yet here was evidence showing otherwise.
See some of the outrage that ensued below:
What’s the “trends blacklist” and “search blacklist,” @twitter? pic.twitter.com/vxH9kh30yF
— Allum Bokhari (@LibertarianBlue) July 16, 2020
BREAKING: Alleged leaked pictures from the Twitter admin control panel that was compromised showcase the buttons ‘Trends Blacklist’ and ‘Search Blacklist’, indicating Twitter DOES have the ability to shadowban it’s users.
— Mike Coudrey (@MichaelCoudrey) July 16, 2020
Twitters admin panel has a button to “blacklist trends.”
So yeah twitter lied, they manually edit trends. The ones advocating violence are kept up. By their choice.
They aren’t a platform. They are a publisher.
Abolish Section 230.
— Cernovich (@Cernovich) July 16, 2020
Excuse me, but what’s up with that screenshot showing you have a “Search Blacklist” and “Trends Blacklist” button for Admins? And why is Twitter censoring anyone who tweets the screenshot? https://t.co/KgXg9tWNtd
— Mark Dice (@MarkDice) July 16, 2020
This stunning scandal has reinforced calls for President Donald Trump to strip tech giants like Twitter of all protections and essentially nationalize them.
Not only is it clear now that Twitter has indeed been censoring certain voices, but it’s also apparent that Twitter’s poor security is a national security threat.
Just imagine what might unfold if Twitter hackers were to commandeer the account of the president of the United States …
As The Verge noted, “The threat here is not simply user privacy and data security, though those threats are real and substantial. It is about the striking potential of Twitter to incite real-world chaos through impersonation and fraud. As of today, that potential has been realized.”
Indeed.
It’s unclear why Twitter should remain a private company
It’s not just about free speech anymore, it’s about the security of our country and our communications
— Defeated Will Chambespierre (@willchamberlain) July 15, 2020
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V. Saxena is a staff writer for BizPac Review with a decade of experience as a professional writer, and a lifetime of experience as an avid news junkie. He holds a degree in computer technology from Purdue University.
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