This archive report was first published on 16 July 2020.
On July 16, 2020, Twitter faced a major security breach when several high-profile accounts were hacked. The attackers, who successfully targeted Twitter employees with access to internal systems and tools, used this access to take control of many highly-visible accounts and tweet on their behalf.
Twitter responded to the attacks, saying it was a 'coordinated social engineering attack.' The company briefly suspended some account actions, including preventing verified users from tweeting, in an attempt to gain control of the platform and stop the hijacks.
Twitter also limited functionality for a larger group of accounts, including all verified accounts, while it continued to fully investigate the incident. The firm locked accounts that were compromised and said they would restore access to the original account owner only when they were certain they could do so securely.
Internally, Twitter took significant steps to limit access to internal systems and tools while the investigation was ongoing. Twitter chief executive Jack Dorsey tweeted that it was a 'tough day' for the company and that they all felt terrible that the incident had occurred.
Some of the accounts targeted included those of billionaires Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, and Warren Buffett. The official accounts of Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Mike Bloomberg, Kim Kardashian West, Wiz Khalifa, YouTuber MrBeast, Floyd Mayweather, and Kanye West were also affected.
The hackers posted a cryptocurrency scam promoting the address of a bitcoin wallet with the claim that the amount of any payments made to the address would be doubled and sent back. However, all the compromised tweets have since been deleted.
