Nairobi News

Must Read

Group behind massive Twitter hacking unmasked

By AFP July 18th, 2020 1 min read

Hackers involved in the high-profile hijacking of Twitter accounts earlier this week were young friends with no links to state or organised crime, The New York Times reported Friday.

The attack, which Twitter and federal police are investigating, started with a playful message between hackers on the platform Discord, a chat service popular with gamers, according to the Times.

The paper said it had interviewed four people who participated in the hacking, who shared logs and screenshots backing up their accounts of what happened.

“The interviews indicate that the attack was not the work of a single country like Russia or a sophisticated group of hackers,” the Times reported.

“Instead, it was done by a group of young people – one of whom says he lives at home with his mother – who got to know one another because of their obsession with owning early or unusual screen names, particularly one letter or number, like @y or @6.”