Twitter has updated its findings of the July 15th Twitter hack that affected major cryptocurrency exchanges, entrepreneurs, and politicians. According to the July 23rd update, hackers were able to access DM inbox of 36 high profile accounts including an elected official from the Netherlands.
Twitter Support provided this through a Twitter thread. The July 23rd announced reads:
“We believe that for up to 36 of the 130 targeted accounts, the attackers accessed the DM inbox, including 1 elected official in the Netherlands. To date, we do not have any indication that any other former or current elected official had their DMs accessed.”
On July 18th, Twitter told the community that for 45 of 130 accounts, the attackers were able to initiate a password reset, log in to the account, and send Tweets. “For up to eight of the Twitter accounts involved, the attackers took the additional step of downloading the account’s information through our “Your Twitter Data” tool,” said the July announcement.
The latest announcement reveals hackers were also able to access DM inbox of 36 accounts.
Twitter summarized the attack as below:
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130 total accounts were targeted
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45 accounts had Tweets sent by attackers
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36 accounts had the DM inbox accessed
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8 accounts had an archive of “Your Twitter Data” downloaded
There was a lot of speculation about the 8 accounts that had their Twitter data downloaded. Twitter said:
“We’re hearing confusion around how the 8 accounts we reported yesterday relate to the 36 we reported today. These numbers refer to different things.”
The thread goes on noting:
“8 is the number of accounts where an archive of “Your Twitter Data” was downloaded. This includes all of *your* account activity including DMs. None of the YTD downloads impacted Verified accounts.”
This historic Twitter hack has compromised Twitter accounts of prominent crypto exchanges including Coinbase, Kucoin, Binance, Gemini, and Bitfinex. Individuals such as Justin Sun, Charlie Lee, King Cobie, AngeloBTC, and many others were also affected by the hack. Hackers sent many wicked tweets that featured fake Bitcoin giveaways.
According to a blog post by Twitter, the attack was carried through a social engineering scheme. Attackers successfully manipulated a small number of Twitter employees and “used their credentials to access Twitter’s internal systems” targeting 130 Twitter accounts. Twitter has yet to reveal the details of the remaining 41 accounts.
According to an estimate, hackers were able to receive about $121,000 worth of Bitcoin (BTC) with one Japanese wallet sending $40,000 in BTC to hackers. Tron CEO Justin Sun has also announced a $1 million reward to those who track down the attackers.
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