Earlier this month, hackers launched an attack against the Twitter accounts of a number of high profile individuals, including Barack Obama, Kanye West, Bill Gates, Joe Biden and Elon Musk. But these accounts were not the only ones affected. A July 15 Ad Age article about the hack noted that it ended up locking down verified “blue-check mark” accounts. These accounts, which generally accompany the profiles of media, brands, celebrities and politicians, were unable to  tweet after the attack because their activity set off Twitter’s spam detection systems. But, a greater threat, according to Dr. Damon McCoy, an assistant professor of computer science and engineering, is that it appears that the hack was successful on some level, and “has already encouraged many transactions.” You can read the full article here.

McCoy was also quoted as saying in another article on the topic that ran in Yahoo Finance on July 17, “We really dodged a bullet that they only stole a little over $100,000 in bitcoin. It could have been much, much worse than what happened.” Noting that tweets can influence markets, hackers could “target a particular company’s stock, either make it rise or fall, or even worse, target entire sectors or entire markets,” he said. Read the entire Yahoo Finance article here.