New York state will investigate Thursday’s widespread hack on Twitter, which allowed individuals to take control of several high-profile accounts, like those of former Vice President Joseph Biden and President Barack Obama, and solicit money.
The state Department of Financial Services has been directed to investigate the attack, Gov. Andrew Cuomo said Thursday.
“Twitter is a primary source of news for many, making it a target for bad actors,” Cuomo said. “This type of hack by con artists for financial gain can also be a tool of foreign actors and others to spread disinformation and - as we've witnessed - disrupt our elections.”
DFS is uniquely situated to handle the investigation. The agency, established in the midst of the Great Recession, typically regulates cybersecurity matters and cryptocurrency. The hackers had solicited money through a cryptocurrency platform.
It’s unclear what implications the investigation will have, whether it will be a fact-finding mission or an avenue for enforcement. DFS has sanctioned companies, in the past, for lax cybersecurity measures that have impacted consumers.
Twitter, in a tweet overnight, said the attack appeared to target a small number of the company’s employees to have access to internal “systems and tools.”
“We detected what we believe to be a coordinated social engineering attack by people who successfully targeted some of our employees with access to internal systems and tools,” the social media platform tweeted.
The company hadn’t nailed down the specifics of the attack, as of Thursday afternoon.
