Twitter Hack Draws Reactions from Congress and the FBI 

This week experienced what was most likely the most coordinated, high-profile crypto attempt in recent months, with hackers storming Twitter to steal Bitcoins. While resolutions are currently being made, investigators and the United States government are searching for answers of their own.

Hacking the Bigshots

Twitter went into a meltdown on Wednesday after hackers managed to get into the accounts of several prominent people. These included billionaires like Microsoft founder Bill Gates, Tesla chief executive Elon Musk, and Amazon chief Jeff Bezos. Presumptive Democrat Presidential candidate Joe Biden also fell victim to the hacks, as did former President Barack Obama and model Kim Kardashian. 

The hackers managed to play on these peoples’ popularity to lure victims. Each message included a pledge to “give back,” with the accounts claiming that they would return twice the Bitcoins sent to a specific address. In truth, once the victims sent the money, the criminals ran away with their funds.

Security breaches like these aren’t new to the crypto space. However, the hackers were hoping to capitalize on the widespread ignorance of many across the world. And while they didn’t manage to generate millions of dollars, they did convince victims to send over $100,000 before concerned parties raised alarm. Twitter immediately took action, suspending all verified accounts on its platform until its engineers could resolve the issue.

Coordinating Responses from Everywhere

Responding to the hack, Twitter Support explained in a series of tweets that its help center had confirmed its cause. 

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.

— Twitter Support (@TwitterSupport) July 16, 2020

Per the tweets, the hackers responsible had conducted a “coordinated social engineering attack” on some Twitter security employees to gain access to the social media platform’s internal systems. 

 “We know they used this access to take control of many highly-visible (including verified) accounts and Tweet 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 company explained. Still, many want answers. Yesterday, Forbes Magazine reported that the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) had launched an investigation into the hacks.

Andrew Cuomo, the Governor of New York, also requested that the New York Department of Financial Services investigate the incident. In a statement, he emphasized the importance of cybersecurity to the country, drawing the backdrop of the forthcoming elections.

Senator Roger Wicker (R-Miss.), the Chairman of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, pointed out similar concerns. In a letter to Twitter chief executive Jack Dorsey, he asked the company to brief his Committee on progress made with investigations.

Many in the crypto community have also stepped up to find the hackers involved too. Speaking with industry news source Cointelegraph, Justin Sun, the President of the TRON Foundation, confirmed that he would give $1 million to anyone who could find the hackers and provide pertinent data to investigators. In his statement, Sun added that his company was working with Twitter to resolve the issue.

“We are always vigilant in the handling our accounts; operating safely and responsibly — taking the security of our accounts to the highest standards possible. This only further illuminates the urgent need for our society to adopt decentralized, trustless software and services,” he added.