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Gobbledegook Tweet Causes Panic An ominous tweet from the US Strategic Command—the agency responsible for looking after America’s nukes—simply said “;l;;gmlxzssaw”. Was it a message in a strange code, or maybe a glitch in the software? Had the account been hacked—and if so, what else had been hacked? Thankfully, this time, there’s no need for panic. It turns out a working-from-home manager had left his computer unattended and his young child mashed on the keyboard a few times.

Three Arrests Made Following Twitter Hack

By Dave McKay in cybercrime

August 1, 2020

It Was Those Pesky Kids Mason Sheppard, 19, of Bognor Regis has had felony charges filed against him, for his participation in the recent Twitter hack. Nima Fazeli, 22, from Florida and an unnamed juvenile (suspected to be 17-year-old teen Graham Clark of Tampa) were also charged this week with conspiracy to commit wire fraud, conspiracy to commit money laundering, and the intentional access of a protected computer. In its statement, Twitter also revealed that some of its employees were targeted using a spear-phishing attack via phone calls, which mislead “certain employees and exploited human vulnerabilities to gain access to our internal systems.

Twitter Hack Was the Result of Social Engineering

By Dave McKay in cybersecurity

July 31, 2020

Social Engineering Attack Vector Twitter have declared that the route taken by the threat actors who pulled off this month’s Twitter hack and Bitcoin scam was social engineering. They made convincing but bogus phone calls to Twitter employees and managed to convince them to reveal their credentials. According to Twitter, the social engineering attack gave the threat actors the credentials of a limited set of employees, making it possible for the bad guys to access Twitter’s internal network and support tools.

Update on Major Twitter Hack

By Dave McKay in cybercrime

July 18, 2020

Where’s Captain Kirk? Four participants in the Twitter hack that breached high-profile and verified Twitter accounts in a Bitcoin grabbing scam have given interviews to the New York Times. Their stories suggest that this was not an attack from a state-sponsored offensive cyber division, nor the work of organised crime. It was a group of 19 and 20 year olds who met online on a website/forum ostensibly for people who like to get in first on new platforms and register unusual, significant, or very short user names, (yes, that’s a thing), but actuall a website dedicated to hijacking accounts.

Major US Twitter Accounts Hacked in Bitcoin Scam

By Dave McKay in cybercrime

July 16, 2020

Billionaires Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates and other famous US figures had fake tweets sent out in their name. All of the tweets were designed to make the Titter-verse believe that these major figures were offering to double your money. If you sent them money in the form of the Bitcoin cryptocurrency they “promised” to pay it back in double. Evidently the threat actors gained access to Twitter administrative capabilities and by-passed the passwords on those accounts.