Hackers Had Access Of Company’s Internal Tools, Says Twitter
Twitter finally clarifies the reason for the unprecedented hacking attack on the notable profiles on twitter. Twitter from its support account said that hackers had access to its internal system as the attack couldn’t have been possible without employee privileges and internal tools.
“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,” the tweet reads.
To recall, a bunch of notable Twitter accounts with millions of followers were simultaneously hacked on Wednesday by hackers who used the accounts of Apple, Elon Musk, Joe Biden, and Barack Obama among many other notable profiles to spread a cryptocurrency scam.
The Timeline
At 3:15 AM IST, Twitter posted that once the matter came to the light, we locked the profiles and removed the malicious tweets from affected accounts.
Later on, it also limited the ability to Tweet, reset the password, and some other account functionalities to further investigate the issue. Many verified profile users were reported that they are unable to tweet or reply for a period of approximately 30 minutes.
In the early morning at 6:11 AM IST, Twitter from its support account tweeted, “Most accounts should be able to Tweet again. As we continue working on a fix, this functionality may come and go. We're working to get things back to normal as quickly as possible”.
At 8:08 AM IST, Twitter confirms the theories that the attack could not have been conducted without access to the company’s own tools and employee privileges. “We know they used this access to take control of many highly-visible (including verified) accounts and Tweets 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”, the tweet reads.
Twitter also locked the accounts that were compromised and said “we will restore access to the original account owner only when we are certain we can do so securely”.
