Recently, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey fall victim to a hacking incident. His twitter account was temporarily hacked, and a series of abusive and racist tweets were sent out. The hacker group called themselves “Chucking Squad”.
The hacker was able to gain control of Dorsey account through a technique known as “Sim swapping”. After which, twitter has temporarily suspended the feature “tweeting via SMS”.
What is this SIM Swapping Technique?
In this technique, the hacker tricks the telecommunication company into transferring the target phone number to their own SIM card. “Chuckling Squad” used the same technique and engineered their way into gaining access to Dorsey’s phone number. After which, they used “Tweeting via SMS” feature to send out the abusive tweet using his account without actually logging in to his account.
What is Tweeting via SMS?
This is a feature that allows users the ability to post tweets from their account. User needs to send an SMS message from their registered mobile number in their twitter account. After which the tweet is posted without even logging in or having access to the internet.
This feature was popular back in the day when Twitter was young, and the internet connection wasn’t so good around the world. This feature was heavily used in countries, where the government used to shut down the internet to quash any protest or rebel. However, the feature became less popular since the widespread of internet connection. Still, it was the cause of many misuses as it doesn’t any authentication to post tweets.
Other major celebrity scandals to falling victim to SIM swapping attack in recent days are Chloë Grace Moretz and a number of social media influencers with large followers. These attacks were also committed by Chuckling squad. The company hasn’t revealed the timeline of this temporary ban for now.
