We are in the full swing of summer, which means that news is already lighter than it will be for much of the year, and doubly more son on the weekends. Today’s update is heavy on updates to the attack on Twitter from last week, since the fallout from that remains the most important tech story in a very long time.
Twitter’s Official Update on What The Company Calls a “Security Incident”
Late Friday night Twitter posted to the company’s official blog with more details on what transpired during the attack that compromised many high profile accounts. The company says that 130 accounts were compromised, and that 8 accounts had the full archive of the account downloaded through the “Your Twitter Data” tool which is available to all users to download an archive of their account’s content. Notably, Twitter says those 8 accounts were unverified accounts, so they were not accounts of high profile people like Joe Biden or Barrack Obama.
Twitter took the steps of locking any Twitter account that has had the password changed within 30 days of the attack happening, and is individually verifying ownership of every affected account before allowing the user to gain access. This is out of an abundance of caution, but is causing issues as the company appears to be moving extremely slowly on restoring that access.
The New York Times Has an Incredible Account of The Twitter Hack
The New York Times has interviewed several of the people involved in the Twitter hack, and has an almost unbelievable account of what happened. An individual unknown in hacking circles surfaced on a message board that is often used to buy and sell coveted usernames stating they had gained access to Twitter’s internal admin tool through one of Twitter’s employee Slack channels, and was offering to gain access to user accounts for a price. Several transactions occurred, with other hackers serving as middle-men connecting the hacker to people wanting usernames, before the hacker started taking over the accounts of Elon Musk, Joe Biden, Barrack Obama, and more. The New York Times article is a fascinating read.
Popular Bitcoin Exchange Coinbase Says it Blocked $280,000 USD Worth of Transactions in Twitter Attack
Coinbase, one of the biggest services for facilitating Bitcoin transactions, says it blocked 1,100 customers from sending $280,000 USD worth of Bitcoin to the primary Bitcoin wallet that was used in last week’s Twitter attack. Coinbase says it blacklisted the Bitcoin wallet address, which prevented customers from initiating transactions with it. So while over $118,000 USD was sent to that address, Coinbase seems to have stopped much more.
Microsoft Stops Selling One Year Subscriptions for Xbox Live Gold
Xbox Live, Microsoft’s subscription service that facilitates online gaming on Xbox, has existed since the launch of Halo 2 in 2003. Since that time, Microsoft has sold the service via an annual fee of $60 USD/year. Over time the company has added options to subscribe in increments of one and three months, though the yearly option remained the best value.
With Microsoft pushing Xbox Game Pass and the coming full release of Project xCloud, Xbox Live Gold has turned into what feels like a redundant service. Xbox Live Gold remains a requirement to play games online on existing Xbox consoles, but Xbox Game Pass includes Xbox Live Gold.
What this feels like to me is that when the Xbox Series X launches Microsoft is going to end the Xbox Live Gold service. What this looks like isn’t clear yet, but my guess is that online gaming will no longer require a subscription, which will end the need for Xbox Live Gold.