Twitter hack: Meet the 3 young hackers who masterminded $100k Bitcoin scam and hijacked high-profile accounts
The masterminds behind the high-profile Twitter hacking that happened earlier this week are actually three young boys with no associations to state or organized crime. The group of pals hijacked the accounts of several big names and tweeted out Bitcoin scams, which both Twitter and the FBI are currently investigating. With cybersecurity experts left shocked and surprised by the young hackers, here's all you need to know about the hackers who unfolded everything.
It all began with a playful message on the gaming platform Discord, reveals a report by the New York Times. Their mysterious ringleader, who goes by the username 'Kirk', approached his fellow accomplices late on Tuesday, July 14. 'Kirk' claimed he worked at Twitter and showed off his hijacking capabilities by offering to hack several 'OG accounts' and asking the group to sell them. These OG accounts referred to accounts created long back in Twitter's history with usernames that have just a single character or short word. Since Twitter has protocols set now, those accounts are believed to be extremely in demand by hackers and gamers.
Thus 'Kirk' managed to convince two other young boys who went by the usernames 'lol' and 'ever so anxious' into brokering for these OG accounts. The two then posted their ad on the OGusers.com, where they are allegedly well known, claims NYT. While 'lol' did not reveal his real-world identity to the publication, he did claim he lived on the West Coast and is in his 20s. User 'ever so anxious' is allegedly 19 and lives in the south of England with his mother. Through Kirk's abilities, they began having and selling usernames including @anxious, which 'ever so anxious' long term desire to own.
Once their hijacking and reselling of OG accounts began earning profits, 'Kirk' allegedly went next level and hijacked accounts of popular celebrities and influential figures around the world. He then posted tweets requesting followers to donate Bitcoins to the same wallet address that 'Kirk' had used for the OG accounts. This is when 'lol' claimed to doubt that 'Kirk' ever worked for Twitter, seeing the damage he was willing to cause the company. One of the hackers interviewed by Twitter also claimed that 'Kirk' managed to get into a Twitter Slack channel and thus came across user credentials.
The trio's targets were some of Twitter's most-followed accounts, ranging from Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk to Barack Obama and Joe Biden. "Based on what we know right now, we believe approximately 130 accounts were targeted by the attackers in some way as part of the incident," Twitter's official account shared. "For a small subset of these accounts, the attackers were able to gain control of the accounts and then send Tweets from those accounts.' Official accounts of Apple, Uber, Kanye West, Bill Gates, and many others also tweeted out the Bitcoin scam on Wednesday, which allegedly caused more than $100,000 worth of bitcoin to be transferred to 'Kirk's wallet.
According to Twitter, it seemed like a "coordinated social engineering attack by people who successfully targeted some of our employees with access to internal systems and tools." The other hackers claimed they stopped working for 'Kirk' when other high profile accounts became his targets.