Tech titans and prominent politicians among victims of a sprawling hack that Twitter says leveraged its internal tools
Twitter is reeling from what is arguably the biggest security breach in its history after the accounts of a long list of high-profile figures – including Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Elon Musk, Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos – were hijacked and used to promote a Bitcoin scam.
The spate of attacks started late on Wednesday, with one of the first suspicious tweets then fired off from the account of the Tesla and SpaceX CEO. The now-deleted tweet followed a familiar pattern, bringing echoes of cryptocurrency scams that used Musk’s name and promised to return double the amount of bitcoin sent:
“I‘m feeling generous because of Covid-19. I’ll double any BTC payment sent to my BTC address for the next hour. Good luck, and stay safe out there!” read the message that appeared on Musk’s account.
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A flurry of similar tweets were also sent out from the other hijacked handles; apparently, some people fell for the ploy, since one of the cryptocurrency addresses has, as of the time of writing, received 12.86 BTC (some US$117,000).
We are aware of a security incident impacting accounts on Twitter. We are investigating and taking steps to fix it. We will update everyone shortly.
— Twitter Support (@TwitterSupport) profile twitter accounts hacked promote bitcoin
