Twitter Hack: More Than 1,000 Twitter Employees Had Access to Hacked Accounts

Twitter Hack: Over one thousand Twitter employees had access to the tools that allowed hackers to gain access to the accounts of high-profile Twitter users like Barack Obama, Bill Gates, Elon Musk and others during a massive security breach last week.

Even Twitter contractors at corporates like Cognizant providing IT services had the power to take over the most popular accounts on the site, as per the report.

As per Twitter, the attackers easily manipulated a few employees accounts and used their credentials to access Twitter's internal systems, which includes getting through their two-factor protections. The hacker's accessed tools that are only available to its internal support teams to target 130 Twitter accounts. Out of 45, the attackers were able to initiate a password reset, log in to the account, and send Tweets as well.

Twitter wrote in a blog post, "For up to eight of the Twitter accounts involved, the attackers took the additional step of downloading the account's information through our "Your Twitter Data" tool. This is a tool that provides an account owner with a summary of their Twitter account details and activity. We are reaching out directly to any account owner where we know this to be true. None of the eight were verified accounts."

Twitter is looking for a new security head, working to better secure its systems and training employees on resisting tricks from outsiders.

"We are continuing our investigation of this incident, working with law enforcement, and determining longer-term actions we should take to improve the security of our systems. We have multiple teams working around the clock focused on this and on keeping the people who use Twitter safe and informed," Twitter added in the blog post.

In a worst-ever cyber attack, a string of VIP accounts was attacked last week by hackers who tried to dupe people into sending cryptocurrency Bitcoin. Twitter had acknowledged the attack. Twitter said that it was assessing if non-public data related to these accounts were also compromised.