2020 Twitter Accounts Compromised Attacks

Overview

People were phished using "Phone Spear Phishing".

Details of the Attack

Compromised staff accounts.

Reference to STRIDE

Spoofing (impersonating famous people).

Tampering (unauthorised posting of Tweets).

Repudiation (Denying posting from other people's accounts).

Vulerability Identified

Social Engineering.

Exploit Used

Spear phishing. Account impersonation. Fraudulent tweets.

Type of Threat(s)

Threatening to leak private DM's of compromised accounts.

Financial Implications

Lost of people lost money.

CVE?

Could not find one as the main vulnerability was humans! (Social Engineering)

References

(No date) The 2020 twitter hack – so many lessons to be learned. Available at: https://digitalcommons.kennesaw.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1089&context=jcerp (Accessed: 02 October 2023).

2020 twitter account hijacking (2023) Wikipedia. Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_Twitter_account_hijacking (Accessed: 28 September 2023).

Thompson, N. (2020) How twitter survived its biggest hack-and plans to stop the next one, Wired. Available at: https://www.wired.com/story/inside-twitter-hack-election-plan/ (Accessed: 30 September 2023).

Witman, P.D. and Mackelprang, S. (2022) The 2020 twitter hack -- so many lessons to be learned., Journal of Cybersecurity Education, Research and Practice. Available at: https://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ1332789 (Accessed: 02 October 2023).