Yesterday, several high-profile blue-check Twitter accounts started asking for Bitcoin in the style of a Nigerian money scam.

At first, it just looked like someone had clicked on a wrong link, or it was a more simplified hack that needed a password reset. But as the day went on, it became obvious that this was a widespread problem for Twitter, with multiple high-profile accounts hacked from the same source, all asking for Bitcoin to the same address.
https://twitter.com/_oluwatobiiiii/status/1283513867650437123

Twitter said in a statement that the company detected what they believed to be “a coordinated social engineering attack by people who successfully targeted some of our employees with access to internal systems and tools.”

“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,” the company tweeted.”

Twitter said that once they became aware of what happened, they “immediately locked down” hacked accounts and removed the tweets sent on their behalf. Twitter also limited functionality for all verified accounts, including those that showed no evidence of being compromised, while they investigated the issue.”

“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 said. “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.”

While the non-verified accounts had a good laugh at the expense of the blue-checks, this was not a laughing matter for Twitter. To have that many big names all subjected to the same hack was, quite frankly, embarrassing in the extreme for the company. This wasn’t just people getting passwords – this was someone getting access to Twitter itself somehow.

And now, VICE is claiming that this was an inside job – which would explain how so many accounts got compromised all at the same time.

“We used a rep that literally done all the work for us,” one of the sources told Motherboard. The second source added they paid the Twitter insider. Motherboard granted the sources anonymity to speak candidly about a security incident. A Twitter spokesperson told Motherboard that the company is still investigating whether the employee hijacked the accounts themselves or gave hackers access to the tool.”

The accounts were taken over using an internal tool at Twitter, according to the sources, as well as screenshots of the tool obtained by Motherboard. One of the screenshots shows the panel and the account of Binance; Binance is one of the accounts that hackers took over today. According to screenshots seen by Motherboard, at least some of the accounts appear to have been compromised by changing the email address associated with them using the tool.”

And those screenshots also showed something else.

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

The images being shared – which Twitter promptly started deleting, but the internet is forever – show that despite what Twitter has said for years about shadow banning, they lied. More than that, they lied to Congress about it by claiming that this was solely an algorithm issue that affected both sides of the political aisle.

Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey tried to say, back in 2018, that it was a programming issue that created shadow banning. If that’s so, then why these buttons that are clearly MEANT to be pushed by someone AT Twitter? Wouldn’t that mean that Twitter – now having planted themselves in the fact-checking camp, meaning that they are no longer just neutral “publishers” of other people’s content – was now actively suppressing speech that they don’t agree with, despite what Dorsey said to Congress?

Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri would like some answers from Jack Dorsey about the hack itself, including whether users’ personal data was compromised. He didn’t touch the shadow ban issue… yet.

Dorsey acknowledged that the company had a “tough day” but stayed quiet about what has been revealed – and what could happen next. The FBI is now investigating what happened, and only now are people beginning to acknowledge that a single tweet from a hacked blue-check account could have caused a lot more problems than a Bitcoin scam.

It still isn’t clear what the attackers’ ultimate goals were. But what little has been revealed about the hack so far has already raised serious concerns from policymakers, security experts and some close to Twitter. With the level of access they enjoyed, the hackers could have triggered a sell-off in the financial markets, issued fake policy pronouncements or disrupted entire 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,” said an ex-Twitter employee, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss a former employer.”

Twitter had better get themselves fixed – in more ways than one – or get ready to see their entire business model go up in flames as people desert it in droves.

Featured image via Pixabay, cropped, Pixabay license