Twitter underwent the worst ever cyberattack to have happened on social media, where about 130 high-profile accounts were hacked into and hundreds of users were conned into spending money via cryptocurrency bitcoins.
The New York Times published a report where it revealed that the Bitcoin scam on Twitter can be traced back to a group of hackers who interact online at OGusers.com, a username-swapping community where people buy and sell anonymous online handles.
Two users, identified by the online monikers "lol" and "ever so anxious" came into contact with someone called "Kirk."
"Kirk did have access to Twitter's most sensitive tools, which allowed him to take control of almost any Twitter account, including those of former President Barack Obama, Joseph R. Biden Jr., Elon Musk and many other celebrities," said the report.
Twitter was yet to publically expose the identity of those behind the cyberattack as the investigation is underway.
"But four people who participated in the scheme spoke with The Times and shared numerous logs and screenshots of the conversations they had on Tuesday and Wednesday, demonstrating their involvement both before and after the hack became public".
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The Times learnt that the Twitter hack is not from Russian, Chinese or North Korean hackers but was done by a group of young people, "one of whom says he lives at home with his mother".
The reporters "verified that the four people were connected to the hack by matching their social media and cryptocurrency accounts to accounts that were involved with the events on Wednesday".
Twitter acknowledged hackers took control of its internal system and tools after hijacking the accounts of several top-notch public figures.
The company said that it was assessing "whether non-public data related to these accounts were compromised, and will provide updates if we determine that occurred".
The cybercriminals sent fraudulent tweets from high-profile people like Joe Biden, Barack Obama, Mike Bloomberg and tech billionaires and companies, including Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates and Elon Musk, Apple and Uber, offering to send $2,000 for every $1,000 sent to a bitcoin address.
Celebrities like Kanye West and his wife, Kim Kardashian West, were also hacked.
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According to cybersecurity firms, at least 367 users transferred around $1,20,000 (over Rs 90 lakh) to hackers within two hours of the attack.
The FBI has launched an investigation into the Twitter hack. The US Senate Commerce Committee has also demanded that Twitter must brief it about the incident by July 23.
India's cybersecurity nodal agency Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In) has also sent a notice to Twitter to seek full details of the vulnerability exploited by hackers, modus operandi of the attack, the Indian users who have been affected and the actions taken by Twitter to deal with the impact.
(With Agency Inputs)