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January 21st, 2026
Crazy Catfish Story: The Twitter Hack
There are many big names that use Twitter on a daily basis to promote their work, what they stand for, and to simply get to know their fans. However, with many companies and celebrities using Twitter, there are many people who will want to take advantage of them and their fans to steal a quick buck. That is why the Twitter hack happened, where official accounts of Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Apple, Elon Musk, Kanye West, Bill Gates, among many more accounts. There are also people who make fake accounts pretending to be celebrities, then send messages, guilt-tripping fans to give them money.
What Happened During the Twitter Hack?
The hackers went on popular official accounts of celebrities and businesses and created posts that said, “I am giving back to the community due to the coronavirus! All BitCoin sent to the address below will be sent back doubled. If you send $1,000 I will send back $2,000. Only doing this for 30 minutes. Enjoy!”
Because these posts were from official accounts, people thought that the tweets were legit and sent in thousands of dollars thinking that their favorite celebrities and companies would give them more money back. Instead, $130,000 was stolen from loyal fans in a matter of just 5 minutes.
Who Was Responsible for The Twitter Hack?
Two teenage hackers “lol” and “ever so anxious” both had a reputation of hacking accounts before this incident. They were seen on a website that hackers frequent to buy and sell valuable screen names and social media accounts. “Kirk”, a user on Discord, connected with both of them to be his “middlemen” as he hacked these big-name Twitter accounts to eventually sell them to other hackers.
On the popular messaging app Discord, “Kirk” messaged “lol” stating that he worked at Twitter, and not to show anyone the messages he was about to send him. He then showed “lol” how he can take control of Twitter accounts, which isn’t possible unless you have exclusive access to Twitter’s network.
“lol” didn’t believe he worked for Twitter since he was too willing to destroy their reputation by showing him what “Kirk” can do. They, and another two teenagers, used Twitter’s exclusive tools to go into official popular accounts and hack them. “Kirk” took the stolen money out of the Bitcoin accounts as it came in through Twitter and disappeared, leaving his “middlemen” with no cut of the profits. Investigators are still trying to figure out if any private conversations were leaked due to this hack.
How Might A Similar Incident Affect November 2020’s Presidential Election?
If another hack were to happen around election day on November 8th, the hacker could get a candidate to say something either outrageous or favorable to get attention from the public. People could then judge the tweet and change their candidate preference based on what the Tweet said.
Hackers could also read private conversations that a political candidate was having and use them to change the outcome of the election. The hacker could either blackmail them to drop out of the race based on what the conversation was about or leak the conversation so that people would either like the candidate or dislike them more.
Twitter Thought it Was Secure But Doesn’t Know How It Got Hacked
Twitter released a statement stating, “We’re embarrassed, we’re disappointed, and more than anything, we’re sorry. We know that we must work to regain your trust, and we will support all efforts to bring the perpetrators to justice.”
Twitter former employees have shared that they think the hackers used a major tool to log-in to these valuable accounts and post fraudulent tweets, which matches the stories that the hackers have shared. There are different levels of access based on the type of account the employee has based on their level of authority, and Twitter does not know what level of access the hackers had when hacking the accounts.
There are some employees and security that believe the level of security could’ve gone down due to remote work from home policies because of COVID-19. While this may be a theory, there is still no evidence that the level of security did go down so employees could work from home easier, but Twitter has not commented on this. It is also difficult to track down which employee’s account was used to hack the official accounts and will take law enforcement to help figure this out.
Social Catfish is Here to Help You!
If you feel like your social media profile, such as your Twitter account, was hacked, Social Catfish is here to help you! We can reverse search any name, email address, phone number, social media account, or image to see who it is you’ve really been talking to.
