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July 17, 2020 03:53 am

Who's Behind Wednesday's Epic Twitter Hack?

Brian Krebs has written a blog post with clues about who may have been behind yesterday's Twitter hack, which had some of the world's most recognizable public figures tweeting out links to bitcoin scams. An anonymous reader shares an excerpt from the report (though we strongly recommend you read the full analysis here): There are strong indications that this attack was perpetrated by individuals who've traditionally specialized in hijacking social media accounts via "SIM swapping," an increasingly rampant form of crime that involves bribing, hacking or coercing employees at mobile phone and social media companies into providing access to a target's account. In the days leading up to Wednesday's attack on Twitter, there were signs that some actors in the SIM swapping community were selling the ability to change an email address tied to any Twitter account. In a post on OGusers -- a forum dedicated to account hijacking -- a user named "Chaewon" advertised they could change email address tied to any Twitter account for $250, and provide direct access to accounts for between $2,000 and $3,000 apiece. "This is NOT a method, you will be given a full refund if for any reason you aren't given the email/@, however if it is revered/suspended I will not be held accountable," Chaewon wrote in their sales thread, which was titled "Pulling email for any Twitter/Taking Requests." Hours before any of the Twitter accounts for cryptocurrency platforms or public figures began blasting out bitcoin scams on Wednesday, the attackers appear to have focused their attention on hijacking a handful of OG accounts, including "@6." That Twitter account was formerly owned by Adrian Lamo -- the now-deceased "homeless hacker" perhaps best known for breaking into the New York Times's network and for reporting Chelsea Manning's theft of classified documents. @6 is now controlled by Lamo's longtime friend, a security researcher and phone phreaker who asked to be identified in this story only by his Twitter nickname, "Lucky225."[...] But around the same time @6 was hijacked, another OG account -- @B -- was swiped. Someone then began tweeting out pictures of Twitter's internal tools panel showing the @B account. Another Twitter account -- @shinji -- also was tweeting out screenshots of Twitter's internal tools. Minutes before Twitter terminated the @shinji account, it was seen publishing a tweet saying "follow @6," referring to the account hijacked from Lucky225. Cached copies of @Shinji's tweets prior to Wednesday's attack on Twitter are available here and here from the Internet Archive. Those caches show Shinji claims ownership of two OG accounts on Instagram -- "j0e" and "dead." KrebsOnSecurity heard from a source who works in security at one of the largest U.S.-based mobile carriers, who said the "j0e" and "dead" Instagram accounts are tied to a notorious SIM swapper who goes by the nickname "PlugWalkJoe." Investigators have been tracking PlugWalkJoe because he is thought to have been involved in multiple SIM swapping attacks over the years that preceded high-dollar bitcoin heists. Now look at the profile image in the other Archive.org index of the @shinji Twitter account (pictured below). It is the same image as the one included in the @Shinji screenshot above from Wednesday in which Joseph/@Shinji was tweeting out pictures of Twitter's internal tools. This individual, the source said, was a key participant in a group of SIM swappers that adopted the nickname "ChucklingSquad," and was thought to be behind the hijacking of Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey's Twitter account last year. The mobile industry security source told KrebsOnSecurity that PlugWalkJoe in real life is a 21-year-old from Liverpool, U.K. named Joseph James Connor. The source said PlugWalkJoe is in Spain where he was attending a university until earlier this year. He added that PlugWalkJoe has been unable to return home on account of travel restrictions due to the COVID-19 pandemic. [...] If PlugWalkJoe was in fact pivotal to this Twitter compromise, it's perhaps fitting that he was identified in part via social engineering.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.


Original Link: http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/ZT54Q6KfzAk/whos-behind-wednesdays-epic-twitter-hack

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