Social Media Hacking is on the Rise

A disturbing trend is on the rise in social media hacking. More and more user accounts are being compromised and misused. The Twitter attack in mid-July was perpetrated by a 17-year old amateur who, along with two others, has been charged with some 30 felonies. There was a ransomware attack on fitness app brand Garmin, which caused users devices to be shut down for a couple of days. Over the last few days, two new attacks have come to light: YouTube and Reddit.

The YouTube attack has actually been going on since at least July 29, when Chilling Tales for Dark Nights made it known that their account was attacked. On August 6, Jon Prosser of Apple tweeted out that his account was hacked, 2FA was bypassed potentially due to a SIM card swap as he and his team no longer have access to the channel. YouTube’s response? Fill out a form and wait. These accounts are live streaming Bitcoin scams to the account subscribers. Prosser tweeted:

Prosser is clearly not happy with YouTube, and as of 8/6, Chilling Tales for Dark Nights was still waiting on next steps as well. Esports commentator Rod Breslau shed some light on the situation as well, “From talking to YouTubers these stolen account bitcoin scams have been going on for months and way longer than the recent Twitter hack, YouTube has yet to address the problem, and they’re making people wait weeks to get their account back.”

YouTube’s response team is under serious fire, or will be if they aren’t yet. Yes, these things take time to investigate, but there is absolutely no reason those accounts should continue to be active. Cutting off access to the affected accounts is the first step to stopping the hack. It will force the hackers to attempt to get other accounts, which could lead to mistakes and getting caught.

The Reddit attack happened on Friday when a number of subreddits were compromised. Hackers reportedly posted messages or changed a subreddit’s design to show support for President Donald Trump. “An investigation is underway related to a series of vandalized communities,” a Reddit spokesperson said in a statement to The Verge. “It appears the source of the attacks were compromised moderator accounts. We are working to lock down those accounts and restore impacted communities.”

Right now it is not known how the accounts were compromised, but there is a post on r/subredditdrama which listed some of the subreddits that were affected. The list includes r/CFB, r/food, r/Japan, r/nfl and more. The subreddits appear to be reverting back to normal.

In the past, we’ve talked about the importance of MFA and 2FA, but in these cases it appears that even those processes were bypassed. This just goes to show the importance of a strong and unique password, something else we have discussed at length. If you cannot come up with or remember a variety of unique and strong passwords, consider using a password manager. A password manager can create strong passwords you don’t even know and save them in a safe place so you don’t have to remember them.

With social media attacks on the rise, it is becoming more clear that hackers tactics are indiscriminate. Information is their form of commerce, it’s what they use to get money in their pockets. Bitcoin scams help, too. Don’t fall for Bitcoin scams. Use strong passwords that are unique to each website. Use 2FA or MFA when you can, even if hackers somehow bypass it, it’s an added layer of protection. It is becoming more and more evident that everyday users must protect their information or risk becoming a victim.

About the Author

PWV Consultants is a boutique group of industry leaders and influencers from the digital tech, security and design industries that acts as trusted technical partners for many Fortune 500 companies, high-visibility startups, universities, defense agencies, and NGOs. Founded by 20-year software engineering veterans, who have founded or co-founder several companies. PWV experts act as a trusted advisors and mentors to numerous early stage startups, and have held the titles of software and software security executive, consultant and professor. PWV's expert consulting and advisory work spans several high impact industries in finance, media, medical tech, and defense contracting. PWV's founding experts also authored the highly influential precursor HAZL (jADE) programming language.

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