The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has announced that it is launching an investigation into the recent Twitter hack that saw more than 130 accounts compromised for the purpose of obtaining BTC from unsuspecting users.
The FBI Is Taking Control of Things
The attack occurred last Wednesday and saw the likes of former president Barack Obama, former vice president Joe Biden, Bill Gates and Elon Musk among others having their social media accounts hijacked. The attackers then put out messages to their followers telling them to send bitcoin to anonymous addresses if they were interested in getting their money doubled. In all, the attackers took home as much as $121,000 in BTC.
For the most part, the attack has not been as bad as it could have been. The stolen amount is considerably small when compared with the high-ranking cyberattacks that have meandered about the crypto space over the past few years. Still, a major crime was committed, and now it looks like law enforcement agencies are getting involved and working to uncover the mystery of what has occurred.
In a statement, the FBI mentioned:
The accounts appear to have been compromised.
Thus far, no news there, but it’s still early. Twitter first noticed that accounts had been hijacked for the purpose of stealing digital currency funds earlier in the week. The company sent out a series of digital messages explaining:
Our investigation is still ongoing, but here’s what we know so far… 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 has also mentioned that the hackers ultimately gained access to employee accounts and credentials to control the high-profile accounts in question. In a separate statement, the social media giant explained:
We know that they [the hackers] used this access to take control of many highly-visible (including verified) accounts and tweet on their behalf.
One of the very first accounts that was hijacked did not belong to someone super famous but is still a relatively well-known and popular account. It belonged to a cryptocurrency trader who goes by the name of “Angelo BTC.” This individual currently boasts more than 100,000 separate followers. This suggests that the hackers themselves are members of the crypto space and may even hold prominent roles within the community, though at the time of writing, their identities have not been revealed.
Maybe Sending Money Via Social Media Isn’t a Good Idea
A statement has also come by way of the United Kingdom’s National Cyber Security Center. The Agency explained:
While this appears to be an attack on the company rather than individual users, we would urge people to treat requests for money or sensitive information on social media with extreme caution.
