Illustration by Grayson Blackmon / The Verge
You can’t say you didn’t see it coming.
Whatever Twitter eventually comes to say about the events of July 15th, 2020, when it suffered the most catastrophic security breach in company history, it must be said that the events were set in motion years ago.
Beginning in the spring of 2018, scammers began to impersonate noted cryptocurrency enthusiast Elon Musk. They would use his profile photo, select a user name similar to his, and tweet out an offer that was effective despite being too good to be true: send him a little cryptocurrency, and he’ll send you a lot back. Sometimes the scammer would reply to a connected, verified account — Musk-owned Space X, for example — giving it additional legitimacy. Scammers would also amplify the fake…