Tobias Sylvester
Unidentified hackers broke into the Twitter accounts of prominent technology moguls, politicians, celebrities and major companies were hacked on Wednesday night in an apparent effort to promote a Bitcoin scam.
Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon; Joe Biden, US democratic presidential aspirant; Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla; Apple; and Uber, are among the victims of suspected bitcoin hackers.
Others include Barack Obama, former US president; Michael Bloomberg, former mayor of New York City; Bill Gates, Microsoft co-founder, and US rapper; Kanye West and his wife, Kim Kardashian West.
The scam was done in a series of coordinated tweets with emphasis on “giving back” through doubling of bitcoins amid the coronavirus pandemic.
The tweets provided details of bitcoin addresses where the transaction is to be made.
“Everyone is asking me to give back, and now is the time. You send $1,000, I send you back $2,000,” a tweet from Gates account read.
Similar tweets were shared from other accounts, stating that the transactions will be done within 30 minutes.
According to data from the public register of bitcoin transactions, the Bitcoin address tweeted by the hackers has been sent over 843 Bitcoins, worth more than $7.8 million.
It appeared that popular Bitcoin exchange Coinbase has blocked its users from sending money to the address after over 5,314 persons complied with the request.
Many of the hacked accounts have high number of followers. Gates has 51.1 million Twitter followers, Musk has 36.9 million, while Apple has 4.5 million followers.
The apparently fake tweets were all quickly deleted, although The Associated Press was able to capture screenshots of several before they disappeared.
Twitter put out a statement noting that it was aware of a “security incident impacting accounts on Twitter.” The company said it is investigating and working to fix it, and promised an update shortly.
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.
— Support (@Support) July 15, 2020
In Other News: President Donald Trump had threatened to close down social media platforms after Twitter tagged one of his messages with a fact check warning.
