Bitcoin (BTC) has made global headlines again because of the recent Twitter hack, but this time, we need to work harder to protect Bitcoin’s integrity and the progress the industry has made. The coordinated social engineering attack compromised the Twitter accounts of high-profile figures and organizations like Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, Tesla founder Elon Musk, Amazon owner Jeff Bezos, former United States President Barack Obama and 2020 U.S. presidential candidate Joe Biden, among many others, to ask for Bitcoin in fake “giveaway” posts. When the story broke, the New York Times, BBC and other mainstream media outlets were quick to …

Blockchain forensics firm Ciphertrace has traced funds obtained by the Twitter hackers in the ‘giveaway’ scam to peer-to-peer (P2P) exchanges and crypto gambling sites. On July 21, Ciphertrace reported that 0.2 Bitcoin (BTC) had been transferred to a P2P exchange via a ‘peel chain’ also used by the hackers to move funds to a crypto casino. Peel chains comprise chains of wallets that funds incrementally pass through to obfuscate the movement of illicitly obtained crypto. The tactic is believed to be favored by North Korean hackers — with Ciphertrace estimating that Chinese nationals linked to North Korea have laundered more …

Cybersecurity experts are warning that the Twitter hack on July 15 shows that the social network needs to strengthen its security in order to avoid a worse black swan scenario with serious consequences. In the most recent incident, attackers launched a crypto giveaway scam by posting phishing messages through the hijacked profiles of celebrities and high-ranked political personalities worldwide, collecting over 13 Bitcoin (BTC) from the victims. The attack could have been worse Ilya Sachkov, CEO of threat intelligence firm Group-IB, believes the attack demonstrated a “huge problem of low financial literacy and bad cyber hygiene.” He told Cointelegraph: “This …

Bitcoin.com founder Roger Ver says Twitter seems to be blocking him from sending tweets about non-state issued money. Ver said he was trying to send tweets about instant near-field communication, or NFC, payments for Bitcoin Cash (BCH) and Simple Ledger Protocol (SLP) tokens from be.cash but was unable to. It seems Twitter is blocking me from sending certain tweets promoting non state issued money. pic.twitter.com/7JiZ6G9jXA — Roger Ver (@rogerkver) July 19, 2020 Ver, who has been pushing BCH, did not seem to be one of the users affected by the hack on Twitter. Several Twitter accounts, including celebrities and crypto …

Coming every Sunday, Hodler’s Digest will help you track every single important news story that happened this week. The best (and worst) quotes, adoption and regulation highlights, leading coins, predictions and much more — a week on Cointelegraph in one link. Top Stories This Week Elon Musk, Kanye West and Bill Gates’ Twitter accounts hacked by Bitcoin thief This week, Twitter and Bitcoin suffered a PR disaster. In a coordinated, ambitious attack, about 130 high-profile accounts were hijacked. Top celebrities, entrepreneurs, politicians, businesses and crypto exchanges were affected. Many posted similar tweets that promised followers that Bitcoin payments sent to …

Twitter vows to add more security training and measures as the fallout from Wednesday’s wide-scale hack on the social platform continues. Twitter said in a statement that it is continuing its investigation into the hack while it looks to provide more company-wide security training against social engineering tactics. This will be in addition to cybersecurity coaching they get during onboarding and ongoing phishing exercises. About 130 accounts were compromised on Wednesday when hackers took over prominent Twitter accounts in a Bitcoin hoax. Those compromised included Elon Musk, Kanye West, Bill Gates, former vice president and current presidential candidate Joe Biden, …

Murphy’s law states: “Anything that can go wrong will go wrong.” It always happens with centralized services. A year ago, we saw how half a million Facebook accounts were leaked online, exposing personal data. We will see it many times more with other services. The recent Twitter hack underscores this once again. The accounts of Elon Musk, Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, Kanye West, Kim Kardashian, Mike Bloomberg, Joe Biden, Barack Obama, among others, were hacked to push a fraudulent offer with Bitcoin (BTC). Writing for the BBC, cybersecurity commentator Joe Tidy opined: “The fact that so many different users have …

July 15 will go down as an infamous day for Twitter, as an unknown attacker managed to take control of a number of accounts on the social media platform before duping unwary users into a Bitcoin giveaway hoax. The event grabbed media attention, as some of the world’s most notable companies, politicians and business leaders had their accounts compromised before sharing similar messages touting a Bitcoin (BTC) giveaway that required users to send coins to an address before receiving double that amount back. The likes of Tesla founder Elon Musk, former United States president Barack Obama, 2020 U.S. presidential candidate …

Every Friday, Law Decoded delivers analysis on the week’s critical stories in the realms of policy, regulation and law. Editor’s note New developments in crypto this week are challenging a number of critical boundaries of legal authority. We are, consequently, looking at several cases that promise to set new lines for government reach and overreach. Cassius lamented Caesar bestriding the narrow world like a colossus. While nothing on the docket today is going to be as dramatic as the death of the Roman Republic, we did actually see a pretty eerie yet oddly comical dress rehearsal for bad actors masquerading …

If the company’s jobs site is any indication, Twitter has been openly hiring for security positions in the months leading up to this week’s notorious hack. According to the company’s job search, Twitter posted several key job descriptions pertaining to company security two months ago. The company was (and still seems to be) hiring for a senior infrastructure security engineer, senior security engineer, two senior application security engineers and staff product manager for security and data protection among several others. A job description for one of these positions focuses on the reduction of security risks across the company: “As a …

There are still 14 victims of the massive Twitter hack that could still get their Bitcoin back. These victims sent some Bitcoin to a hacker address, but their transactions are still unconfirmed on the Bitcoin network. They are currently hanging in limbo, or Bitcoin mempool. These transactions seem to be unconfirmed after many hours because the senders designated a very low transaction fee that’s unattractive to miners. Bitcoin Core developer Wladimir van der Laan confirmed this to Cointelegraph. “Miners pick the highest fee-rate transactions, but also might have some minimum fee below which they won't mine transactions at all,” he …

The "Wolf of All Streets" Scott Melker has been unable to do anything more on Twitter than read or retweet more than 24 hours after the massive hack on verified accounts. In a livestreamed interview with Cointelegraph on July 15, the crypto trader said in the midst of the attack he had been unable to verify his account using two-factor authentication. Melker then briefly had full access to read, retweet and post for roughly an hour before having his account restricted following the interview. Twitter Support reported that the platform had “locked accounts that were compromised” and would restore access …