One of the prominent social media has not been excluded from the list of attacks of malicious actors. With the news spread in the cybercommunity, Twitter has been jeopardized for high profiled personalities as perpetrators were able to gain access to it. In the report, politicians, celebrities, and businessman accounts have been compromised, leading to cryptocurrency scam. With this attack, the Federal Bureau and New York cybersecurity experts are now chained to pin down these fraudsters.
The initial investigation leads to speculation that the twitter hack attack was an inside job from an employee able to gain elevated access to internal tools and ability to take over prominent accounts that solicits to its victim an equal worth of cryptocurrency amount. Other researchers claimed that the attack was initiated through a penetrated number porting scheme. The scheme goes on by gaining sensitive information such as the mobile number. With the mobile number, the fraudster will call the telecom provider to execute a number transfer to their controlled device, hence, able to bypass multi-factor authentication that is received through the mobile number on a registered device.
What cybersecurity experts worry more about is that these compromised accounts can be used for a far more devious act such reputation damage through the spreading of fake news. Other than for bitcoin scams, compromised accounts can lead to fraudsters asking ransom money to the owner of the report or be used to wreak issues since the election is due in the US in September. On the other hand, the United Kingdom, through its National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC), has already made a mitigation plan. The plan includes open communication with Twitter and also releasing an official statement of awareness to its people concerning many possibilities of malicious activity surrounding Twitter.
With millions of people using this platform, this twitter hack must not be neglect.
With many relying on it as an essential source of information and communication, the sensitive data and private conversation it held may lead to desolation and disturbances not only in political, business but also in private entities.
Twitter, with its official statement, was able to do an initial assessment and able to confirm the initial count of 130 compromised accounts and are now in contact with the owner and provide assistance to regain control. They added that continuous and agile investigation are still in place to perform a full analysis of their system to determine the extent of damage that has been done by this attack. Countermeasures are now in place, including imposing more security on their network while the investigation is still in progress. As soon as there are developments, they will release it immediately for public knowledge.
Though the incident may have been contained, the aftermath damage is still expected, especially there is a possibility the private information or communication may have also been intercepted by the fraudster that can be used for other malicious activities. The general populace is advised to be more vigilant and cautious about the security of their credential. It should impose a more unique or strong password, especially when using a social media platform to avoid possible exploitation.
