A massive attack on Twitter Wednesday afternoon took out numerous high-profile accounts including our very own Co-Founder, Scott Melker. His influential account has yet to be recovered by Twitter support, who has not given an update in over 16 hours. Here is Scott’s story, told in his The Wolf Den Crypto Newsletter yesterday.

 

I was hacked. Again.

This time I am not alone and it is only my Twitter account and not my entire life that was affected. As you know, some of the largest companies and celebrities in the world were also targeted – Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Apple, Uber, Joe Biden, Barack Obama, Kanye West, Kim Kardashian and many more.

Many verified accounts are back online, having not actually been hacked – they were merely shut down temporarily to avoid the hacker being able to access their account or send a scam tweet. Not the case for me. I was kicked off of the platform and told to change my password. I then immediately received an email that my 2FA had been turned off. Then when I tried to change my password, my email address was “no longer associated” with my Twitter account. Similar stories are being told by many and the accounts that were hacked all are seemingly still offline. I have no access to Twitter support because my email address is no longer associated with an account, so I literally have 0 recourse or information at this time. Twitter support has not tweeted an update in 12 hours.

Not fun. If you have ever experienced a hack, then you understand the uncomfortable feeling of uncertainty, wondering what else they accessed, and not knowing when you will be in control again.

The fact that Twitter was breached internally, that hackers were able to surpass 2FA (I have it on a separate, offline device with Google Authenticator) and that it was seemingly so easy for them is very disconcerting. What if this happens at an exchange and a hacker is able to turn off your 2FA and access your account? The implications are terrifying.

While no level of security would have helped me in this situation, it still reminds us all how important taking your security seriously truly is. I have included my write up from my previous SIM Swap experience in this email, for those of you who were not here last time I was hacked. It has a lot of practical advice for securing your life and assets. If you are American, I highly recommend checking out EFANI, which is the concierge phone company that I use to protect my SIM card.

The irony of this situation is that I was invited onto a live stream with CoinTelegraph yesterday on YouTube to discuss what was happening – this was after the hackers tried to get into my account and I thwarted them, but before they were finally successful.

Here is the video:

In the final 2 minutes of this video, I discussed the risk of dependence on centralized platforms like YouTube and Twitter, especially if you are an “influencer” or doing any business that depends on your exposure. These are single points of failure that you do not control. I discuss how important it is to diversify (like having a newsletter in case Twitter goes away). And what happened? Right when I was done talking, the stream was taken down for a “violation of community standards” literally proving my point in real-time. And an hour later… I lost my Twitter account.

We cannot depend on centralized platforms, no matter how good their intentions are! That is why it’s so important for me to have this newsletter. I wish that every person who followed me on Twitter was signed up.

Bottom line: we are all at risk of being exploited, all the time. Secure your assets and diversify your platforms to mitigate counterparty risk.