Cyberattack
On Wednesday, a cyberattack occurred, compromising the accounts of several influential individuals in the business and political realms. The victims included notable figures such as Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla; Jeff Bezos, the head of Amazon; Bill Gates, the founder of Microsoft; Joe Biden, a U.S. presidential candidate, and former President Barack Obama. Additionally, the corporate accounts of Apple and Uber were also affected. Intriguingly, the compromised accounts were used to post tweets enticing people to send them bitcoin, promising double the funds in return.
Attackers Actions
In previous instances, scammers impersonated individuals like Musk to deceive others into sending them cryptocurrency. However, this time, all the accounts involved were authentic and actually belonged to the targeted individuals. Describing the attackers’ actions, Alex Stamos, the former chief security officer of Facebook, analogized the hack to stealing a McLaren F1, joyriding it, and crashing it into a telephone pole just minutes later.
Twitter stated that it believes the hack resulted from a “coordinated social engineering attack” on its employees. This implies that insiders within the company were deceived into divulging access to internal systems and tools. Stamos emphasized the risk posed by insiders, noting that any business that relies on thousands of employees to function inevitably faces significant threats from within.
Twitter announced that it is actively collaborating with the affected account owners and will continue to do so in the coming days. The company is currently assessing whether non-public data associated with these accounts was compromised and has committed to providing updates if any such compromise occurred.
The extent of control the hackers gained over the compromised profiles, including potential access to direct messages and other sensitive information, remains uncertain. Nonetheless, Twitter assured users that there was no evidence of the attackers obtaining users’ passwords and, as a result, stated that resetting passwords is currently unnecessary.
According to the Justice Department, a recent attack specifically targeted high-profile companies and executives within the cryptocurrency industry, including Binance, Tron founder Justin Sun, and Litecoin founder Charlie Lee. The assault led to the theft of approximately $794,000 in digital assets. In response to his crimes, the perpetrator, identified as O’Connor, has agreed to forfeit the stolen amount to the court and provide restitution to the victims.
The Justice Department revealed that O’Connor also managed to compromise the account of a significant TikTok influencer, subsequently issuing threats to release sensitive and personal material related to the victim unless individuals joined a specific server on the chat app Discord.
U.S. Attorney Ismail J. Ramsey for the Northern District of California commented on the case, stating that O’Connor had left a trail of destruction in the aftermath of his criminal activities. Ramsey emphasized that this case should serve as a cautionary tale, reminding criminals that the law can extend its reach far beyond their expectations.
O’Connor is one of four individuals charged in connection with this scheme. In a separate incident, American teenager Graham Ivan Clark pleaded guilty to fraud charges in 2021. Additionally, Nima Fazeli from Orlando, Florida, and Mason Sheppard from Bognor Regis in the U.K. have also faced charges related to the cyberattack.
The arrest of O’Connor took place in July 2021 in Estepona, a popular resort town located on the Costa del Sol in southern Spain, following the request of U.S. authorities by the Spanish National Police.
