Unconfirmed: 'Twitter Will Be Fun Today': The College-Age Kids Who Hacked Into Twitter

'Twitter Will Be Fun Today': The College-Age Kids Who Hacked Into Twitter - Ep.135

Jul 24, 2020

Haseeb Awan, CEO of Efani, a secure and private cell phone service, talks about how he became acquainted with hackers who took over prominent accounts on Twitter last week. He describes:

the underground industry that steals cell phone numbers and why
who the main players, Kirk, lol and "ever so anxious" are
what the hackers did when they took hold of prominent accounts, such as those of Joe Biden, Barack Obama, Elon Musk, Bill Gates, and those of crypto companies such as Binance and Coinbase
what the hackers could do with the information that they obtained with the accounts they took over
why this was likely not a pre-planned attack
what happened to the security of the Twitter accounts, and why their second-factor authentication protections did not keep their accounts from being hacked
what lessons crypto people can take away from the Twitter hack and how they can protect themselves

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Episode links:

Haseeb Awan: https://twitter.com/haseeb

Efani: https://www.efani.com

The New York Times story detailing the hack: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/17/technology/twitter-hackers-interview.html?searchResultPosition=3

Chainalysis analysis of the Bitcoin obtained in the hack: https://blog.chainalysis.com/reports/twitter-hack-july-2020-update

Twitter’s account of the hack: https://blog.twitter.com/en_us/topics/company/2020/an-update-on-our-security-incident.html

Analysis by Krebs on Security: https://krebsonsecurity.com/2020/07/whos-behind-wednesdays-epic-twitter-hack/

The recounting by the holder of the @6 account: https://medium.com/@lucky225/the-twitter-hack-what-exactly-happened-d8740d33c1c