The largest Twitter to date was the one that took place last July and resulted in the accounts of many famous people, including Elon Musk, Joe Biden, and companies like Apple, being compromised.
Twitter staff working from home connected to the company network using a VPN , which allowed secure access to work systems for people working outside the office.
the hackers managed to obtain the phone numbers of Twitter staff and pretended to be from the company's IT department, telling them to enter the VPN connection on a fake page. This gave them access to the real VPN website, through which they eventually entered the Twitter network.
The criminals then published details of 130 Bitcoin accounts, including verified profiles, that have millions of followers.
The tweets were offering to send $2,000 for every $1,000 sent to an anonymous Bitcoin address. Security experts sounded the alarm immediately, due to the serious potential of such an intrusion for creating geopolitical disasters through misinformation.
The most likely scenario is that the hack was possible because employees were working from home and were easier to fool by scammers.
Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey said that a small number of employees fell victim to a phishing attack, which resulted in the infamous hack.
Jake Moore, cybersecurity expert ESET , said remote working has increased the risk for companies.
" Cybersecurity risks have increased dramatically as the workforce has shifted to remote work. Malicious actors are impressive at adapting to new situations while looking for new vulnerabilities to exploit," he said.
The hackers had already studied the basic tasks of the employees in order to impersonate the Twitter IT department with greater credibility.
This is part of the social engineering process. The NYDFS decided to investigate the breach due to the involvement of the famous accounts used to promote the scam, as the agency is responsible for regulating cryptocurrency companies.
Aside from the potential reputational damage caused by the breach, the parties involved managed to gather bitcoin worth over $118,000 and uncovered a vulnerability in the massive social media platform that plays a role in communications and news. The hack method also reveals vulnerabilities that exist in the current trend of working from home related to the pandemic.
