⁠McAfee Warns of Advanced Hacking After Twitter Account Hijacking

Cybersecurity Expert John McAfee has warned of advances in hacking methods after his personal Twitter account was hijacked to promote a number of alternate cryptocurrencies last week.

The founder of computer security company McAfee had regularly been posting a ‘Coin Of The Day’ review on his Twitter page. The hackers gained access to his account by changing his phone number to request a new password.

They then posted a series of Tweets using McAfee’s profile to promote a number of coins on Dec. 28, as cypherpunk Jameson Lopp shared on Twitter:

Speaking to RT after the incident, McAfee said he had no control over the situation.

“What happened is brand new to me. They managed to hack AT&T to move my phone number to another phone”

The series of tweets saw the value of the cryptocurrencies touted rise in value - and McAfee believes the hackers would have made a lot of money in the process.

“Why would they do that? Because I was issuing every day a recommendation for new alternative coins, alternative to Bitcoins cryptocurrencies. People would invest hundreds of dollars into these coins. What the hacker did was to recommended six different coins within six minutes and invested, I’m sure, much money beforehand into those.”

Inside job
The cybersecurity expert speculated that the hack may have been an inside job. He suggested that an AT&T official was bribed to give the hackers access to his account.

McAfee also estimated that the hackers may have made millions of dollars, which would easily compensate any bribe needed to carry out the attack.
McAfee only regained access to his Twitter account three days later. He posted a couple of tweets confirming that his account had been compromised while hitting out at users that had ridiculed the situation.