Twitter reveals new details about the hacking of celebrity accounts

Twitter said Saturday that hackers who hacked into accounts of prominent users last Wednesday, including former US President Barack Obama and Microsoft founder Bill Gates in a fraud using Bitcoin, also downloaded data from other accounts.

Twitter clarified in a new statement on Saturday that the hackers involved in the massive attack that targeted a large number of accounts on its platform Wednesday were able to download information of up to eight accounts, but none of them were documented.

Twitter explained that the unknown hackers targeted 130 accounts and were able to reset passwords for 45 of them to manage and Twitter from them and may have sold the username data to some accounts.

The attackers were able to access personal information for the 130 accounts including email addresses and phone numbers, but did not know the previous passwords.

The company says they may have uploaded eight account data with "Your Twitter Data" tool, which enables the account owner to download details of his activity.

Twitter confirmed that the attackers targeted a few of the company's employees through the so-called social engineering, which according to the statement means manipulating people in order to implement certain procedures and reveal classified information.

By doing this, they succeeded in accessing tools used by the support team, including the two-step verification process.

The attack included documented accounts of a number of well-known personalities, including the account of the American presidential candidate Joe Biden, former US President Barack Obama, American billionaire Elon Musk and reality TV star Kim Kardashian in addition to the famous American rapper Kanye West and many other accounts.

The massive hack resulted in the company shutting down a number of documented accounts from Twitter in response to the security incident.

Twitter said in its new statement that in cases where the attackers seized these accounts, they may have been able to display additional information, indicating that a criminal investigation into these activities is still ongoing.

And the New York Times reported on Friday that the massive penetration is behind a group of young adults who are not related to organized crime or specific countries.