Twitter faced questions Friday from Sen. Josh Hawley, Missouri Republican, after reports suggested employees of the social media company may have been involved in this week’s hack.
Mr. Hawley, who previously sought answers from Twitter shortly after Wednesday’s breach, inquired about the incident further in another letter sent to its chief executive officer.
Twitter originally reported that the breach, which briefly resulted in the hijacking of several highly popular accounts, was the result of a “coordinated social engineering attack by people who successfully targeted some of our employees with access to internal systems and tools,” Mr. Hawley noted.
“Contrary to this account, press reports suggest that the employees in question may not have been mere victims,” Mr. Hawley said, referring to a recent Vice article that said sources in the hacking community claim that a Twitter employee may have been paid to facilitate the breach.
“To your knowledge, did any Twitter employee voluntarily participate in or facilitate Wednesday’s incident?” he wrote Jack Dorsey, Twitter’s co-founder and CEO.
Mr. Hawley additionally inquired about images that were recently shared on Twitter — and quickly removed — showing what appears to be internal tools accessed during the breach.
He also inquired about how the tools are used and whether they could be used or abused to affect the visibility of specific posts or people on the platform, or subject them to so-called “shadowbanning.”
Twitter had no immediate comment on the senator’s letter.
Official accounts belonging to former President Barack Obama, presumptive 2020 Democratic presidential nominee Joseph R. Biden and billionaires Elon Musk, Warren Buffet and Kayne West were among those hijacked Wednesday and used to solicit payments made in Bitcoin, a type of digital cryptocurrency. Twitter said late Thursday that 130 accounts in all were targeted during the incident and it remained under review.
“We are continuing to assess whether non-public data related to these accounts was compromised, and will provide updates if we determine that occurred,” Twitter said.
• Andrew Blake can be reached at ablake@washingtontimes.com.
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