New Delhi: Three people have been arrested for their involvement in the Twitter hack which occurred mid-July. The ‘Mastermind’ of the whole operation is allegedly a 17-year-old. The hacker used telephone phishing attacks to break into the system. Twitter had said that the credentials of their employees were used for the massive Bitcoin hack, which gave way to speculation that this was probably an inside job, but as it turns out the hackers use a phishing attacks to get into the system.
According to an ANI report which cited CNN, the individuals included Mason Sheppard, a 19-year-old from the United Kingdom who went by the moniker “Chaewon” online, Nima Fazeli, a 22-year-old from Orlando, Florida who went by the alias “Rolex”, as it was written on a statement from United States Attorney David Anderson. The minor Graham Ivan Clark was arrested from Tampa, Florida while the other two were taken into custody the FBI said.
Several high-profile Twitter accounts including that of US presidential candidate Joe Biden, Tesla CEO Elon Musk, Microsoft Co-founder Bill Gates and of Apple were simultaneously hacked on July 15th 2020 by attackers to carry out what appeared to be a cryptocurrency scam. The accounts, along with those of former President Barack Obama, Kanye West, Warren Buffett, Jeff Bezos and Mike Bloomberg, posted similar tweets soliciting donations via Bitcoin to their verified profiles as well.
After this attack, Twitter announced the strengthening of security measures during the investigation of the hacker attack, significantly restricting access to its internal systems. Their blog said “This attack relied on a significant and concerted attempt to mislead certain employees and exploit human vulnerabilities to gain access to our internal systems. This was a striking reminder of how important each person on our team is in protecting our service. We take that responsibility seriously and everyone at Twitter is committed to keeping your information safe.”