Some very notable Twitter accounts got hacked yesterday including those of former President Barack Obama, former Vice President Joe Biden, businessmen Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Warren Buffet and Bill Gates, and entertainer Kanye West.
The hackers used the accounts to request money be sent to a virtual wallet that collects the cryptocurrency bitcoin. In just minutes, tens of thousands of dollars were swindled.
The job forced Twitter to shut down the accounts of most high-profile users in what became known as a ban on the “bluechecks,” referring to the blue check Twitter puts beside accounts of celebrities and other well known individuals.
Following the attack user Haseeb Awan posted the following message, claiming the hack was facilitated by a Twitter insider:
Here are more screen shots. Average American data is sold for 60 cents so this is still a high price & guy who sold the logins thought it will be just couple of verifications which is still an industry in itself. Even customer support staff have access to this info pic.twitter.com/5aZzrNIiJx
— Haseeb Awan (@haseeb) July 16, 2020
In Awan’s tweets are screenshots of the backend-Twitter panel of a user. What they reveal are that manually editing trends is something available to Twitter admins (notice the “Trends Blacklist” button), and that “shadowbanning” is very real (notice the “Search Blacklist” button).
These are both things Twitter has previously swore the platform does not do.
The hack reveals that Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey may have lied in testimony before Congress on both issues.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but does this not constitute proof that Jack lied during his House testimony? And wouldn’t that constitute perjury?
— lordbitememan (@lordbitememan) July 16, 2020