Recently the twitter scammer took over a large leap, ever since the novice investors losing their money for the fake tweets about bitcoin went viral from verified twitter accounts of former US president Barack Obama, Amazon’s founder Jeff Bezos, and Microsoft’s CEO Bill Gates.

The Twitter accounts of major companies and individuals were utilized as a trap for common investors that were compromised on Wednesday. A maintained and well-planned mass attack over social media. Twitter continues to investigate this so-called coordinated social engineering attack. Apart from the mentioned names, renowned names and high-profile people who became targets of the scam included Mike Bloomberg, Joe Bidden, Kim Kardashian, Elon Musk, and Warren Buffet.

Jack Dorsey, co-founder and CEO of Twitter said that it was unlikely and too unbelievable for a social media platform like twitter, to get into the scam. The hacked accounts were made use of to send bitcoin scam messages inviting other twitter users, to send huge payments to a BTC address, with the assurance of getting it double in return.

What was the scam exactly?

The scam had hackers getting into high-profile user’s accounts, sending fake messages offering $2000 for every $1000 shipped to an anonymous twitter scam bitcoin address. For example, the tweet posted by Elon Musk’s account said: “the bitcoin sent to this address will be backed in double the amount if you sent $1000 on the below address, the returns become $2000”.

It turned out that whosoever worked the scam, made a lot from it according to blockchain.com tracking, the BTC account received as much as $118,211.37. The three richest profiles being, Musk, Bezos and Gates have a combined net worth of $366 billion, and the value of 1 bitcoin hovering around is $9,113

How did the scam hold grip?

The scam is suspected to happen though, the first few tweets that made the round from Bill Gates and Elon Musk’s accounts which were hitting bitcoin and were deleted too. Later, persistently the scale only got more significant from the hackers. Twitter made all attempts of completely restricting access to the breached accounts for the current situation.

Twitter mentions that all the targeted and compromised accounts have been taken into control, and hence have restricted their activity, including the ability to tweet for a few days. Assurances have been made, to restore access of the original account owner, securely. Twitter believes it to be a planned and coordinated engineering attack, that gave the world twitter scam 2020, and confirmed that hackers deliberately targeted some of the twitter employees with authority to enter the internal systems and tools. However, rapid steps are taken and re-installation of accounts for their ability to tweet is resuming, but it can take time.

Twitter’s response to the threatening scandal

Twitter mostly has a huge suspicion, that there can be a possibility of more malicious activity from the hacker’s point, who took over the high-profile accounts through employees’ access to twitter. Twitter is investing more behind the scam activities, which may include, stealing of data, or malicious conduct initiated through verified accounts and more.

It is highly unlikely for such a scam to take place taking into consideration the fact that this scam was very provoking in making successful dollar transactions done on random BTC accounts, that direct messages through such accounts were also sent as part of the hacking scheme.

Earlier, Jack Dorsy tweeted to the audience expressing the grieve and mentioning “Tough day for us at twitter”. Dorsy said the entire scam to be highly dubious and that its terrible that 2020, brought such a time for twitter. He also indemnified that diagnosis has been initiated and every detail about the scam will be shared as they get, to explain what exactly happened.

The scale of the hack was massive and marked its entry in some of the biggest scams globally over social media, with a reported revenue loss of $118,211.37. Twitter, for some days, has shut down the ability of tweeting. Majorly for those 359,000 additional verified accounts that were involved, including some of the named above if not all users.

Moreover, it has been confirmed that the hackers stole no passwords information amidst the scam, and all operations are terminated until the internal tools. Cybersecurity of all accounts are made more secure. The attackers managed to get hold over 130 small subsets accounts, and the activities over them have also been restricted.

In addition to this, even those accounts which were not directly related to the scammed will remain locked, as the investigation continues. It is yet not confirmed whether personal messages threads were compromised as part of the account takeovers along with non-public data related to these accounts. 

The experts take over the entire twitter scam 2020

Arjun Vijay, who is the co-founder of Giottus cryptocurrency Exchange, stated that such scams have already happened in the past, but this time the scale was unexpected. It was a well-planned and well-coordinated scam attack, where many verified accounts were deliberately chosen for the spread, and hence got hacked at the same time.

Along with this, the strange thing to notice was, direct messages floating into ordinary peoples account, and same tweets making the rounds directing towards the same scam site. Unfortunately, more than 373 users got trapped into the account for the global scam.

Many law enforcement investigations which also included the federal bureau of investigation are involved and activity probing the current situation over another angle of concern; that social media platforms like twitter are vulnerable towards exploitation and can be hacked.

As a result, the powerful site access tools went into the wrong hands from the twitter employees grip and exposed a serious threat over security and platform user’s data. The lawmakers are now hounding twitter over more transparency over the complete incident. The attack is sure to leave long-standing consequences.

Cybersecurity and Blockchain security

It was unbelievable to accept that the company’s own internal employee tools were compromised and used for the hack, which puts the system and security of a well-established social media platform like twitter in question.

Since the internal tools were made use of, even the accounts that claimed to have two-factor authentication were trapped into the bitcoin scam. All the messages circulated as a part of the hacking were directed over a common twitter scam bitcoin address (BTC address). The transaction was made, where through the blockchain security of twitter, Blockchain.com

Blockchain security is a chain of secured digital blocks, which contains records of transactions. Every block is connected to all blocks, before and after it all. This method makes it really difficult to tamper with any single record, as well as those which are associated with it to avoid any detection.

Conclusion

The primary lessons learnt from the biggest twitter scam 2020, is that there is no free lunch in the world. As an experienced novice investor, you should always ask questions and doubt such secure money-making schemes. Hackers have a complete grip over twitter, which was introduced, false bitcoin schemes as a more easy trap. People should remain more careful and aware and understand no opportunity gives quick money in a short time.