Hackers Tell the Story of the Twitter Attack From the Inside

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

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 the people responsible, and how they did it, have been a mystery. Officials are still in the early stages of their investigation. Story continuesPlaying a central role in the attack was Kirk, who was taking money in and out of the same Bitcoin address as the day went on, according to an analysis of the bitcoin transactions by The Times, with assistance from research firm Chainalysis.

“lol” did not confirm his real-world identity but said he lived on the West Coast and was in his 20s. “ever so anxious” said he was 19 and lived in the south of England with his mother. But “lol” and “ever so anxious” were well known on the website OGusers.com, where hackers have met for years to buy and sell valuable social media screen names, security experts said.

In one of the first transactions, “lol” brokered a deal for someone who was willing to pay $1,500, in bitcoins, for the Twitter user name @y. The money went to the same bitcoin wallet that Kirk used later in the day when he got payments from hacking the Twitter accounts of celebrities, the public ledger of bitcoin transactions shows.

Discord logs show that while PlugWalkJoe acquired the Twitter account @6 through “ever so anxious,” and briefly personalized it, he was not otherwise involved in the conversation. PlugWalkJoe, who said his real name is Joseph O’Connor, added in an interview with The Times that he had been getting a massage near his current home in Spain as the events occurred.

“we just hit cb,” an abbreviation for Coinbase, Kirk wrote to “lol” on Discord a minute after taking over the company’s Twitter account.

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