Coinbase says it put more than $280,000 worth of bitcoin transactions on hold for the period of the Twitter hack. The cryptocurrency exchange said it blacklisted and stopped more than 1,100 customers from sending bitcoin to the hackers’ account.
On 15th July 2020, ‘several actors’ hijacked Twiter accounts belonging to various prominent individuals and companies. Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden, former president Barack Obama, Tesla chief executive Elon Musk, Apple, and 100’s of others had their accounts hacked.
The attackers then posted a Tweet urging people to send them bitcoin with the promise of doubling it.
The attackers made away with more than $100,000 worth of bitcoin. However, data from some of the world’s biggest bitcoin exchanges show that the attackers could have gotten a lot more. At least $300,000 worth of bitcoin transactions were held back by the exchanges.
According to Coinbase, about 14 of its users sent around $3,000 worth of bitcoin to the scam’s bitcoin address before the company blacklisted it.
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Coinbase says it noticed the scam after seeing the fake giveaway tweets from fellow exchanges, Gemini and Binance.
“We noticed within about a minute of the Gemini and Binance tweets,” Philip Martin, Coinbase chief information security officer told Forbes. Bitcoin exchanges Gemini and Binance were both early targets in the Twitter hack, just before Coinbase.
Both Gemini and Binance, also confirmed that they stopped funds from going into the hacker’s bitcoin address.
According to Jesse Powell, chief executive of Kraken, the “hack shows that security is about layers of protection. Somebody has to be watching the admins and setting up alerts to watch for these vulnerabilities.”
Twitter is still investigating what is the biggest security breach in its history. The company said hackers were able to convince some of its employees and use their internal systems and tools to access the accounts.
It also confirmed in a blog post that 130 accounts were targeted. The hackers were able to initiate a password reset, log in to the accounts, and send tweets from 45 of those accounts. Twitter adds that the hackers were able to download account data of up to eight unverified users.
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