During the attack, large volumes of spam, generated from compromised accounts, were launched towards potential victims. Some of the compromised accounts belonged to high-profile UK individuals such as cabinet ministers, as well as to telephone banking services provider First Direct.
The messages prompted victims to log into a counterfeit site that requested Twitter login credentials, thus aiming to hijack the accounts as well as (potentially) install malware on the victim’s computers which could in turn steal any other passwords stored within the infected device.
Representatives of First Direct have confirmed the hack and have apologised for the inappropriate tweets sent to the bank’s followers. However, but First Direct has insisted that no customer or personal data had been compromised, with the hack being limited to the bank’s Twitter account.
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