It's not too hyperbolic to say that WW3 could be started on a platform like Twitter. Having a "shutdown" button doesn't seem that extreme when essentially the entire site seems to be compromised. I'd bet my bottom dollar that Congressional hearings are going to happen.
It hasn't gotten so far that heads of states end up in angry loops of escalation (yet). Luckily the only 2 hotheads in that position are Trump and Kim Jong-Un, I would argue and they seem to get along.
Given the nature of how twitter has influenced elections, why would this be extreme? So far the known targets all appear to be of a particular political persuasion, but I haven't seen a comprehensive list yet.
I don’t, they can say anything posing as anyone and the general public will believe it, this is a genuine hazard. Seriously, if I were them I’d pull the plug until this is fixed.
As far as we can tell right now, Obama and Biden could've posted about a complete coup to assassinate Trump and that every middle eastern country already has nukes on their way...
Imagine if the hacker was a bit more nefarious and hacked Trump's account to say he was launching a first strike attack against Iran or on Musk's account saying he was halting Model S production due to battery defect. The real world ramifications could be immense.
a temp fix is to modify the backend to prevent anyone from pasting a bitcoin address or any long string of numbers and letters that may resemble such an address
Cryptocurrency scams have been going on for years despite the fix being an easy "if reply to a high-profile account and contains the words "bitcoin" or "giveaway" then ban".
If they couldn't (or didn't want to) do it then I very much doubt they can do it now.
Not really. That just prevents them from posting bitcoin addresses. They still have access to all the accounts and can post whatever they like. It's still dangerous. And what about all the real posts that contain long strings?
For the specific variation this hack is currently taking, sure. But the actual problem is that someone has access to these accounts and can post anything they want. That is not okay, and has nothing to do with bitcoin addresses.
A bitcoin scam, in the grand scheme of things, is on the more harmless end of the spectrum of what they could do with this. They absolutely should shut it down while they work this out.
Unless, perhaps, they can't.