Another high profile Twitter account hacked but this time the victim was an Energy Minister from Belguim, Tinne Van der Straeten. The account of the Minister was hacked and then used for promoting a fake Ethereum giveaway campaign.
It was reported today that the Minister for Energy in Belgium, Tinne Van der Straeten, has become a victim of hack attack. The hack occurred to the Energy Minister on 11th February and resultantly the hackers managed to take control of her Twitter account.
Later on it was confirmed that the Twitter account was an authentic account of the Minister which was hacked. The hackers have debarred the Minister from using her account and immediately changed passwords and reset one of their own. After several attempts, the Minister remained failed to get access to her Twitter account to avoid suspicious activity. Even the Belgium Government’s technology department too tried to retrieve the account back, however, the efforts went in vain.
It was later found out that the hackers started to use Ministers hacked account for ulterior motives. After changing profile credentials, the hackers changed the name of the account into “Ethereum Foundation” to make it sounded more authentic. Once they done away with profile name, the hackers then moved on to launch a fraud crypto giveaway campaign. It could be seen on the Minister’s profile that “50,000 Ethereum giveaway scheme” has been publicized heavily from the account.
However, so far there hasn’t been any tweets generated, forwarded, tagged etc. by the hackers. It took some hours for the Minister’s team to finally retrieve the account back. Upon receiving back the account, the Minister noted that there were several tweets which were “liked” by the hackers. Most of these liked tweets were regarding Cameron Winklevoss, a well-renowned Bitcoiner and crypto investor and entrepreneur, ChamathPalihapitiy. Other than that, there wasn’t anything else found which could potentially be identified as suspicious activity.
It was informed by Minister’s spokesman, Jonas Dutordoir, that when the incident happened, the Minister immediately informed Twitter. Thereafter, with Twitter’s cooperation, the Minister was able to change the security credentials of her Twitter account.
Dutordoir also suggested that the Minister has ordered an investigation into the matter. Investigation’s scope is to find out how hackers got into the account of the Minister and what the whereabouts of hackers were.
Minister’s Cabinet later on advised other members to take all necessary steps to prevent any further occurrences of such events.
So far the Belgium Government has not been able to find the culprits behind the incident. Similar incident occurred with Hilde Urbanie Julia Crevits, Flemish Education Minister, whose Twitter account too was hacked on 9th February. Though she got back her account, but the hackers posted some obnoxious tweets such as discouraging drugs and promoting acid.
