Twitter staffer was paid out to aid with account hack: report

Hackers compensated a Twitter staff who served them carry out an unparalleled assault on several large-profile accounts, a report says.

The Twitter insider allegedly labored with hackers to just take more than the accounts of Tesla main Elon Musk, previous president Barack Obama, tech tycoon Monthly bill Gates and other individuals, in accordance to Motherboard.

A single of the nameless hackers included in Wednesday’s assault told the outlet they paid the personnel for their assist, though the conditions of their purported offer are unclear.

“We applied a rep that practically done all the get the job done for us,” a further hacker informed the tech news website released by Vice Information.

The accounts were taken about with an internal Twitter tool that exhibits different specifics about the identity and position of user accounts, these kinds of as whether or not the e mail deal with has been confirmed and whether or not the account has been suspended, in accordance to screenshots Motherboard published.

Twitter informed Motherboard that it’s nevertheless investigating irrespective of whether its worker authorized hackers to accessibility the instrument or employed it to acquire more than the accounts by themselves.

The corporation referred The Post’s queries to its Wednesday assertion on the assault, which acknowledged that hackers “successfully specific some of our workers with accessibility to interior systems and equipment,” and utilized that entry to choose command of significant-profile accounts owned by Apple, Uber, Kanye West and other people.

San Francisco-primarily based Twitter stated it has moved to restrict entry to its interior systems and instruments whilst it investigates the incident, which it called “a coordinated social engineering attack.”

“We’re hunting into what other destructive action they could have executed or information they may perhaps have accessed,” Twitter reported in a series of tweets.

The hack sent Twitter shares tumbling 5.1 % in premarket buying and selling Thursday to $33.83 as of 7:19 a.m.