By Carl Kruse
Several Twitter admin accounts were recently compromised allowing a hacker to modify other accounts (see here), bringing even Jeffery Epstein’s Twitter account alive again to say, “I did not kill myself!”
A scary idea, well at least to me, that Twitter admin accounts can change whatever and whenever on Twitter – photos, tweets, bios. The accounts of Biden, Musk, Obama, Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, Kanye West, and many others were also affected.
Clever as the hack was, the hacker’s skills were deficient. He posted from various prominent accounts asking to be sent Bitcoin, that he would double in return, a clearly amateurish move.
So amateurish that many wondered what this was all about.
The hacker could have instead engineered a shorting campaign to net tens of millions of dollars in a few hours, something the media seems to have missed. For example, he could have posted via crypto exchange Twitter accounts that the exchanges had been attacked and drained of funds. Then he could have posted on Biden’s account saying that if elected President he would ban Bitcoin. Similar apocalyptic posts on key influencers would temporarily collapse Bitcoin. All the while the hacker would be shorting Bitcoin with intense leverage on Bitmex, Binance, Buybit, Kraken, and other crypto exchanges and watch money roll in. More importantly, by limiting exposure to only the crypto community he would not attract as widespread attention as brazenly screwing the range of Twitter personalities he did.
He/They netted $100,000, which while terrible, is a fraction of the possible damage.
Twitter tried removing some of the messages, which were identical (another amateurish move) as they were easy to find and delete, only to see them reappear later, making one wonder how much control Twitter had of its own system.
As an aside, I wonder what the hacker may have found by looking at everyone’s private messages on Twitter? Did he snag a few? And what of Tweeting bellicose messages from accounts of world leaders, say like Trump does. Could he have triggered even greater pandemonium?
Carl Kruse
Contact: Carl AT Carlkruse DOT com
Main page is at https://ww.carlkruse.com
Another discussion of social media is on this other Carl Kruse Blog.