The Twitter hack: social engineering and admin tools
Famous accounts tweeted a bitcoin scam after attackers fooled employees with access to internal tools.
Last Wednesday, accounts belonging to Barack Obama, Elon Musk, Apple and many others tweeted the same bitcoin scam. Twitter says attackers used social engineering on employees who had access to internal admin tools, then used those tools to take over accounts.
No password was cracked. People were tricked, and the tools were too powerful.
Lessons for any company with admin tools:
- Limit who can use them, and what each person can change.
- Require a second person to approve high-risk actions, like changing a famous account’s email.
- Log everything the tools do, and alert on unusual use.
- Train staff for phone attacks: callers pretending to be IT are effective, especially with everyone working from home.
And for everyone: no real person doubles your bitcoin.