We’ve reported on a number of stories from Twitter as of late with the majority shedding the platform in a bad light thanks to hackers and scammers cheating their way into not only the social networking accounts but bank accounts too. It now seems that the general public weren’t the only ones who the hackers targeted, with Twitter themselves revealing that a Netherlands elected official had their direct messages accessed.
In a tweet from the Twitter Support account, they stated this:
“We believe that for up to 36 of the 130 targeted accounts, the attackers accessed the DM inbox, including 1 elected official in the Netherlands,”
“To date, we have no indication that any other former or current elected official had their DMs accessed.”
We believe that for up to 36 of the 130 targeted accounts, the attackers accessed the DM inbox, including 1 elected official in the Netherlands. To date, we have no indication that any other former or current elected official had their DMs accessed.
There’s no indication from this statement of who the Netherlands elected official is but according to various reports, as well as this tweet from a Dutch journalist, it was in fact Party of Freedom leader Geert Wilders who was the target. This isn’t the most high-profile of accounts but let’s not forget, Bill Gates, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Kanye West were similarly caught up in the Bitcoin scam and while their DMs are seemingly safe and secure, it just goes to show that if hackers have the manpower, even the co-founder of Microsoft isn’t safe.
There has been heavy speculation that this was an ‘inside job’ with one of its employees being the key player in the attack but Twitter hasn’t commented on this and instead claimed that the hack was a “social engineering attack”, not the work of one of their own.
The FBI is currently investigating this so they’ll likely be more information to come. Let’s hope it doesn’t open a whole new can of worms for the social networking giant!
