The Belgian energy minister’s official Twitter account was the latest victim in a high-profile hacking incident. Tinne Van der Straeten’s profile was hacked to promote a fake giveaway for Ethereum tokens.
Hacked Twitter accounts
Whoever was behind the incident changed the minister’s verified profile to “Ethereum Foundation” to make it look legitimate. First reports showed that a fake giveaway of 50,000 ETH spread on Van der Straeten’s account.
However, by the time the minister’s staff restored the account, there were no tweets in sight. However, the activity of her Twitter profile during the incident indicated that the hacker liked tweets posted by Bitcoin investor Cameron Winklevoss and venture capitalist Chamath Palihapitiya.
The Brussels Times quoted Van der Straeten’s spokesman Jonas Dutordoir and reported that they immediately reached out to Twitter. In addition, all passwords were changed accordingly by the cabinet.
Dutordoir added:
How this could have happened is under investigation.
Your cabinet recommended that all employees take the correct security measures to avoid such situations. However, the spokesman made it clear that no other accounts or sensitive data were compromised in the incident.
Current hacked Twitter profiles of high-profile politicians
While there are no details on who the mastermind of the attack might be, the incident occurred just hours after a similar incident involving the Flemish Minister of Education.
According to The Brussels Times, Ben Weyts’ Twitter account was hacked on February 9th, when hackers posted strange messages like “I love acid (not the drug)”.
A similar incident occurred in September 2020, but Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi was involved. His account was hacked by unknown threat actors who asked for Bitcoin donations in a series of tweets as part of the National Relief Found for Covid-19.
The hacker used the pseudonym John Wick, which probably refers to the action film character of the same name by Keanu Reeves.
Interestingly, it’s also the alias of a well-known cybercrime group, although authorities failed to track down the thought leaders behind the incident.
What do you think of this incident? Let us know in the comments below.
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