This archive report was first published on 18 July 2020.
On July 17, 2020, Twitter was hit by a sophisticated hacking attack that exposed the security vulnerabilities of the platform.
According to a statement posted on Twitter's blog, the hackers accessed tools only available to internal support teams to target 130 Twitter accounts.
For 45 of those accounts, the hackers were able to reset passwords, login, and send tweets, while the personal data of up to eight unverified users was downloaded.
Posts trying to dupe people into sending hackers Bitcoin were tweeted by the official accounts of Apple, Uber, Kanye West, Bill Gates, and Barack Obama, among others.
More than $100,000 worth of Bitcoin was sent to email addresses mentioned in the tweets, according to Blockchain.com, which monitors crypto transactions.
Twitter has since locked down affected accounts and removed the fraudulent tweets, and also locked accounts not affected by the hack as a precaution.
The attack has raised questions about Twitter's security, particularly as it serves as a megaphone for politicians ahead of the November election.
Twitter has stated that it is limiting the information it makes public about the attack while it carries out 'remediation steps' to secure the site.
