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upstart writes in with an IRC submission:

Hackers Tell the Story of the Twitter Attack From the Inside:

A Twitter hacking scheme that targeted political, corporate and cultural elites this week began with a teasing message between two hackers late Tuesday on the online messaging platform Discord.

"yoo bro," wrote a user named "Kirk," according to a screenshot of the conversation shared with The New York Times. "i work at twitter / don't show this to anyone / seriously."

He then demonstrated that he could take control of valuable Twitter accounts — the sort of thing that would require insider access to the company's computer network.

[...] Despite global attention on the intrusion, which has shaken confidence in Twitter and the security provided by other technology companies, the basic details of who were responsible, and how they did it, have been a mystery. Officials are still in the early stages of their investigation.

But four people who participated in the scheme spoke with The Times and shared numerous logs and screen shots of the conversations they had on Tuesday and Wednesday, demonstrating their involvement both before and after the hack became public.

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

The Times verified that the four people were connected to the hack by matching their social media and cryptocurrency accounts to accounts that were involved with the events on Wednesday. They also presented corroborating evidence of their involvement, like the logs from their conversations on Discord, a messaging platform popular with gamers and hackers, and Twitter.

Original Submission