Terming the widespread hacking of Twitter accounts as "a coordinated social engineering attack", the social networking site said that it is investigating the matter and has taken steps to limit access to internal systems and tools.

The massive hacking attack included bogus tweets from technology moguls, politicians and celebrities including Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Mike Bloomberg, Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, Elon Musk, Kanye West and his wife, Kim Kardashian West.

In a series of tweets made on the ‘Twitter Support’ home page, Twitter said that it is investigating the attack that has raised questions regarding the safety of accounts of the social networking site.

“We detected what we believe to be a coordinated social engineering attack by people who successfully targeted some of our employees with access to internal systems and tools… Once we became aware of the incident, we immediately locked down the affected accounts and removed tweets posted by the attackers,” one tweet stated.

“Internally, we've taken significant steps to limit access to internal systems and tools while our investigation is ongoing,” it added.

This, in turn, forced the tech giant to take disruptive steps including limited functionality i.e. ability to tweet or reset the password, for a much larger group of accounts, including all verified accounts.

While most accounts are now back on track, accounts that were compromised have been locked and will be restored only when the tech giant is sure about their security.

There is no evidence that the owners of these accounts were targeted themselves. Instead, the hacks appeared designed to lure their Twitter followers into sending money to an anonymous Bitcoin account.

-with agency inputs

First Published:Jul 16, 2020 2:17 PM IST