Does anyone else feel like there is more to this Twitter Hacking story?
I am not usually one for conspiracy theories, but the things coming out thus far aren't really adding up...
As you are likely well aware of by now, there was a massive Twitter hack that took place yesterday where numerous high profile Twitter accounts were briefly taken over.
They tweeted out messages asking people to send them bitcoin in exchange for more bitcoin being sent back in return. You know, the typical bitcoin scam tweets we have seen on Twitter for years now.
They looked something like this:
(Source: https://twitter.com/barackobama?lang=en)
Or this:
(Source: https://twitter.com/KimKardashian)
Somehow that typo in that one above seems to add to its legitimacy...
The official story...
According to what we are hearing thus far the hack was pretty small compared to what it really could have been.
Nothing is official as of yet, but these are the details thus far...
- Someone at Twitter was bribed for access to the accounts
- The hackers were able to gain control over some very high profile accounts via the employee
- Roughly $135k worth of BTC was sent to the hackers wallets
That's basically it at this point.
I'm not sure about you, but that seems pretty small potatoes to me.
And it appears I am not the only one feeling that way...
(Source: https://twitter.com/Cernovich/status/1283837229677178880)
Couldn't have said it better myself!
What could have been...
The hack may seem pretty bad on first glance, but it really is nothing compared to what it could have been.
Think about it for a second.
What if these hackers had gained access to some accounts of world leaders and coordinated tweets about an impending economic collapse, a run on the banks, a global food shortage, or even worse, a nuclear war...
The damage that might have caused would have been orders of magnitude worse that we saw, and likely a lot more profitable for the hackers.
I mean they risked their freedom for a $100k?! That doesn't make sense to me...
My guess is they also had derivative positions that netted far more money than what they were able to make from the bitcoin scam, possible in Twitter's stock.
Which just so happened to be down a couple percentage points on the news.
Even with short term out of the money puts though, that is small potatoes compared with what they could have done.
I mean imagine the kind of stock market reaction had multiple world leaders tweeted about impending nuclear war... markets would have crashed in seconds...
So, while the news continues to trickle out as to exactly what happened here, my guess is it was a lot bigger than what we are hearing initially, and we may not even hear the full details for some time yet, heck, if ever.
Either way, I am not buying the 'bribe and make off with $100k' story that is being pushed right now.
Stay informed my friends.
-Doc
To the question in your title, my Magic 8-Ball says:
Hi! I'm a bot, and this answer was posted automatically. Check this post out for more information.
That means there is more to the story.
I agree... something doesn't smell quite right, here. I mean, are people really that stupid and desperate? Or so naive that maybe they thought the scam would net them $10M rather than $100K? If they are, then I fear for the world...
Not only that but it sounds like they used an old coinbase wallet, which will make it all that much easier to catch them.
My thought is that the DMs were the real target. Still, why bring attention to yourself then..
It just seems like they could have done so much more...
Yes, but I don't also discount lack of ambition and incompetence. If they got hold of the tools via social engineering then they might not really have had the technical chops to do more than a bit of a prank.
Good point...