Twitter freezes password reset to address cyberattack

Twitter Inc has announced that some users may be unable to tweet, reset their password, or access other functionalities, as the tech company tries to address the breach on its systems on Wednesday.

According to its tweet, the most accounts affected by this freeze are verified individual accounts, including those with no evidence of being compromised.

We also limited functionality for a much larger group of accounts, like all verified accounts (even those with no evidence of being compromised), while we continue to fully investigate this.

— Twitter Support (@TwitterSupport) July 16, 2020

This freeze is, however temporary as users and verified account holders should be able to tweet as soon as the breaches on the internal systems are addressed, and their accounts are confirmed to be secured.

The disruptive move, according to the company, is a necessity, and users will be updated on the progress of the investigations and their account functionalities.

In its Thursday morning tweet, Twitter announced that investigations are ongoing to decipher how the attackers were able to gain access to its internal systems and tools.

Nairametrics reported the breach of the Twitter accounts of top personalities, with the hackers tweeting about a BTC giveaway, and BTC doubling.

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Speaking about the breach, Twitter issued a statement;

“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.

“We know they used this access to take control of many highly-visible (including verified) accounts and Tweet on their behalf. We’re looking into what other malicious activity they may have conducted or information they may have accessed and will share more here as we have it.”

As soon as the breach was detected, the affected accounts were locked down, and Twitter took down the fraudulent tweets.

The company however promised that all of the compromised accounts will be restored as soon as the security has been re-established.

The statement added that steps have been taken to “limit access to internal systems and tools” while investigations are ongoing, and heighten the security of the medium in the future.

Backstory

Bitcoin scammers, on Wednesday, hacked into the Twitter accounts of many top personalities and leading brands, including Barack Obama, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Kanye West, and Uber, tweeting about a BTC giveaway. They later tweeted that they would double Bitcoins for BTC holders.

According to Cameron Winklevoss, co-founder of the world’s leading crypto exchange Gemini, the scammers were only able to make away with “a paltry sum,”, giving rise to thoughts that there might be other reasons for the attack.

Twitter has commenced investigations into the attack.

Meanwhile, Tron founder, Justin Sun has put a bounty on those responsible for the attacks, saying he is ready to give $1 million to the person or persons responsible for tracking down the hackers.