Major Twitter hack pushes bitcoin scam on Obama, Joe Biden, Elon Musk, Bill Gates, Apple, Uber, Biden accounts, collects $$$$
This is quite a major hack.
Now is a good time to change your Twitter password, if you are a user.
Hackers pumping a cryptocurrency giveaway scam appear to have compromised the Twitter accounts of leading exchanges, prominent individuals, major corporations, and at least one news organization.
The Twitter accounts of former President Barack Obama and VP and current Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden were compromised amid the ongoing event, and at the time of this blog post, hours after the attack began, both accounts with the malicious urls are still active.
Twitter is doing a bad job handling this security event. Very bad.
Hackers gained access to the official verified Twitter accounts of some of America's most famous, wealthy, and powereful people and best-known brands, including:
- Barack Obama
- Joe Biden
-Jeff Bezos
-Bill Gates
-Kanye West
-Mike Bloomberg
-Elon Musk
-Apple
- Uber
...and many other verified accounts with smaller followings were hacked to promote the scam, which amassed many gullible victims.
Rumors suggesting a Twitter employee with access to the user management panel was targeted. That would explain why none of the tweets appear to be coming from a 3rd party app and even affected accounts with 2FA.
- Mikael Thalen (@MikaelThalen) July 15, 2020
Suspected bitcoin scammers appeared to launch a wide-ranging attack on major Twitter accounts on Wednesday in an attempt to get people to transfer cryptocurrency, taking over accounts belonging to some of the world's wealthiest corporations and people, including Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos and presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden.
A tweet typical of the attack sent from the account of Bill Gates, the software mogul and the world's second-wealthiest person, promised to double all payments sent to his bitcoin address for the next 30 minutes.
Everyone is asking me to give back, and now is the time," the tweet said. You send $1,000, I send you back $2,000."
Similar tweets appeared on the accounts of tech executive Elon Musk, rapper Kanye West and corporations including Apple, Uber and the money transfer app Cash.
Some people were complying with the requests to send money, according to the public register of bitcoin transactions. The bitcoin address linked in the tweets was quickly inundated with more than 200 instances of people sending it money, adding up to a total of $100,000.
Other people on Twitter called out the tweets as obvious scams before the tweets were deleted after several minutes.
Some of the accounts have huge followings. Gates has 51.1 million Twitter followers, whileMusk has 36.9 million. Apple's account has 4.5 million.
Read more reporting from David Ingram and Kevin Collier at NBC News.
UPDATE: @BillGates has been compromised. @CoinDesk has been compromised again, I've been locked out of the account. Updates here and on other CD reporters' handles. https://t.co/Z9HpCsL582
- Nikhilesh De (@nikhileshde) July 15, 2020
If these hackers have read/write privileges of every account on Twitter and use it to make like $200k in Bitcoin, they are the worst criminals of all time.
- Ben Collins (@oneunderscore__) July 15, 2020
Imagine gaining access to the Twitter account of the potential next president of the United States and using it to fish for bitcoin.
- Pete Schroeder (@peteschroeder) July 15, 2020