Warning Twitter hackers could start a WAR after Joe Biden, Barack Obama and Elon Musk’s accounts taken over – The Sun

EXPERTS are warning that Twitter hackers could affect the stock market, swing elections or even start a war after several high-profile accounts, including Barack Obama's, Joe Biden's and Elon Musk's, were hijacked.

Wednesday's widespread Twitter hacking targeted celebrities, politicians and major companies with large followings, and asked users to send Bitcoin to a specific link.

In addition to Obama, Biden, and Musk, billionaires Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos were also targeted, as were Kim Kardashian and Kanye West.

Blockchain records show that some people fell for the hack attack during the roughly four hours that it was ongoing, and the scammers received more than $116,000 worth of cryptocurrency from more than 300 people.

Now, experts are saying Twitter was "extremely lucky" that the hackers just wanted money, according to The Daily Mail, because other motives could have yielded disastrous results.

Twitter called the hack "social engineering," which is when a hacker tricks someone into providing login credentials. However, two people claiming to be behind the attack anonymously told Motherboard that they bribed a Twitter employee for access, which enabled them to target the high-profile accounts.

Twitter hasn't confirmed yet whether the hackers accessed any private information from the accounts they targeted, but the fact that the accounts of prominent figures could be highjacked is a cause for concern, experts warn.

Officials told The New York Times that Wednesday's attack was "amateurish," but warned that it did expose certain flaws in the tech giant's security system.

The official, who was not named, also said that a nation with state-level hacking operations, like North Korea, Russia or China, may be able to use those exposed flaws to their advantage.

The stock market would likely be a prime target, experts said.

The successful hacking also has experts worried about the upcoming election. Adam Conner, vice president for technology policy at the Center for American Progress, warned that targeting accounts like Biden's could have dire consequences.

"This is bad on July 15, but would be infinitely worse on November 3rd," he tweeted.

Kevin Mitnick, a hacker turned security consultant, told BBC Radio 4 that if the hackers were able to gain access to private messages stored on accounts, that could open victims up to blackmail. And that could be a threat to national security.

"You can imagine if those messages were released or if these hackers threatened to release them," he said.

After Wednesday's mass hacking, Twitter took the incredible step of temporarily blocking all verified accounts from tweeting for a short while.

Twitter users around the world reported issues in the hours after the attack.

However, the company confirmed that "most accounts" were able to tweet again by Wednesday night.

The company's CEO Jack Dorsey acknowledged the Twitter chaos in his own tweets Wednesday night.

"Tough day for us at Twitter," he wrote.

"We all feel terrible this happened. We’re diagnosing and will share everything we can when we have a more complete understanding of exactly what happened."

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