Three charged in "Bit-Con" hack of famous Twitter users including Obama, Gates..

[eddie13]

"
The hackers used bitcoin because the cryptocurrency is supposed to be hard to track, but federal investigators say they were able to track the hackers down through bitcoin's decentralized public ledger.

Investigators “analyzed the blockchain and de-anonymized bitcoin transactions allowing for the identification of two different hackers,"
"
https://www.foxbusiness.com/money/teenager-charged-with-30-felonies-in-bit-con-scam-of-prominent-twitter-users


How did they get caught? Anyone know?
Are they just stupid or are the mixers bunk VS the gov or what?

[suchmoon]

Are they just stupid

That's always a safe bet.

Even if a mixer spilled some beans it probably wouldn't matter if the perps e.g. used Tor or didn't try to cash the coins or didn't anything else similarly stupid. A typical mixer doesn't KYC so it wouldn't have much to give to the government.

Edit - some details here: https://www.wired.com/story/how-alleged-twitter-hackers-got-caught-bitcoin/

Basically no Tor and no mixer, used Coinbase, etc. And it wasn't really the blockchain that did them in. They started the scheme basically in public on some forum and on Discord and the forum had been hacked in the past so all account e-mails, IPs, etc were conveniently available to the FBI. The funny thing is they made like 30 grand on low-key Twitter account theft and nobody cared. Probably would have made more if they just stayed under radar.

[tippytoes]

Are they just stupid

That's always a safe bet.

Even if a mixer spilled some beans it probably wouldn't matter if the perps e.g. used Tor or didn't try to cash the coins or didn't anything else similarly stupid. A typical mixer doesn't KYC so it wouldn't have much to give to the government.

Edit - some details here: https://www.wired.com/story/how-alleged-twitter-hackers-got-caught-bitcoin/

Basically no Tor and no mixer, used Coinbase, etc. And it wasn't really the blockchain that did them in. They started the scheme basically in public on some forum and on Discord and the forum had been hacked in the past so all account e-mails, IPs, etc were conveniently available to the FBI. The funny thing is they made like 30 grand on low-key Twitter account theft and nobody cared. Probably would have made more if they just stayed under radar.

This is the mistake of Sheppard. Not really good at covering their tracks. Interesting what would be the ruling of the judge on their case? If you submitted your KYC to the exchange like Coinbase, the Feds or other authorities can uncover your transactions with them. But it is already a good thing that they were tracked fast. At least 3 scammers out in the field.

[suchmoon]

If you submitted your KYC to the exchange like Coinbase, the Feds or other authorities can uncover your transactions with them.

That's been obvious for a long time. It's interesting that they mention Binance, which also seems to have shared some info. But I guess pretty much any entity will do that when faced with a subpoena.

[eddie13]

Are they just stupid

That's always a safe bet.

Even if a mixer spilled some beans it probably wouldn't matter if the perps e.g. used Tor or didn't try to cash the coins or didn't anything else similarly stupid. A typical mixer doesn't KYC so it wouldn't have much to give to the government.

Edit - some details here: https://www.wired.com/story/how-alleged-twitter-hackers-got-caught-bitcoin/

Basically no Tor and no mixer, used Coinbase, etc. And it wasn't really the blockchain that did them in. They started the scheme basically in public on some forum and on Discord and the forum had been hacked in the past so all account e-mails, IPs, etc were conveniently available to the FBI. The funny thing is they made like 30 grand on low-key Twitter account theft and nobody cared. Probably would have made more if they just stayed under radar.

Ok so they were stupid.. Thanks..

I don't feel bad for them getting caught for being stupid.. Just scammers anyway so fuck em..
Pretty good lolz though trolling those elites, gotta say..


Another question is...
How bad should one feel for the complete imbeciles that were scammed by them?
How bad are the scammers really, if idiots fell for such an obvious scam?

Not sure..


It's bad for Bitcoin on both counts though..
1. Being a Bitcoin scam..
2. Being the Bitcoin scammers got caught..

Maybe "any press is good press" though, and this got a bunch of press..

[Gyfts]

I'm more interested in how kids in their early 20's got through to Twitter's API and was able to hack all these accounts. Article claims these guys socially engineered Twitter employees which makes me believe Twitter's platform was never secure to begin with if it was that easy.

[PrimeNumber7]

I'm more interested in how kids in their early 20's got through to Twitter's API and was able to hack all these accounts. Article claims these guys socially engineered Twitter employees which makes me believe Twitter's platform was never secure to begin with if it was that easy.

Appearently they were able to get some Twitter employees to give them access to internal twitter systems. I would say this should be very embarrassing on the part of Twitter.

It appears that twitter is investing far too much time in 'social justice' and far too little time in their security.

Some have suggested these people have a career in pen-testing ahead of them, however they apparently did an especially poor job in covering their tracks. It is probably a better bet that twitter has especially poor internal security. One might even suggest that twitter has 'MtGox level' security.