11/20/2020 12:45
Clarín.com
Technology
Updated 11/20/2020 12:45 PM
The social network Twitter hired the famous hacker
Peiter Zatko
, popularly known as
Mudge
, as the company's new head of security, as he himself confirmed in his account this week.
"It looks like it's public now. I
'm excited to join the Twitter executive team
! I truly believe in the mission of serving the public conversation (fairly). I'll do my best!" Wrote the popular computer scientist.
Looks like the cat is out of the bag.
I'm very excited to be joining the executive team at Twitter!
I truly believe in the mission of (equitably) serving the public conversation.
I will do my best!
https://t.co/ZQkhYTXLQZ
- Mudge (@dotMudge) November 16, 2020
This is not the first job with a large technology firm for Mudge, who had previously worked for the online payments company Stripe, Google and even for the US Department of Defense at the Defense Research and Projects Agency. Advanced (DARPA, for its acronym in English).
In July this year, cybercriminals hacked dozens of Twitter accounts, including those of various celebrities, and downloaded personal data of at least eight users,
in a scam to collect payments with Bitcoin.
The hack affected, among others, the social network accounts of the US president-elect and then Democratic candidate Joe Biden, former president Barack Obama, billionaires Bill Gates, Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos, artist Kanye West and from the companies Uber and Apple.
In total, the hackers tried to break into 130 Twitter accounts, and managed to change the passwords of 45 of them, allowing them to send tweets
posing as those celebrities.
Many of those messages offered to double the money that users put in Bitcoin to a virtual cryptocurrency wallet, a scam in which at least 510 people fell, who together entered more than $ 120,000,
according to the analysis company of "blockchain" Chainalysis.
Twitter specified that, according to its investigation, the hackers launched a
"scam based on social engineering"
by "successfully manipulating a small number of employees and using their credentials to access the internal systems" of the social network , including your
"two-factor"
security systems
.
In this article from the New York Times, the hackers recounted the historical credential theft.
