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What We Know about the Twitter Hack of Bill Gates, Obama, Jeff Bezos & Kim Kardashian by Bitcoin Scammers
It’s a difficult time to be an engineer at Twitter. Accounts of tech companies, billionaires, and politicians have been hacked by Bitcoin scammers.
This is what we know:
It started with Elon Musk‘s Twitter getting hacked and sending out a tweet encouraging followers to send money to a Bitcoin wallet.
Quickly a version of the same request began to pop up on other accounts: Bill Gates, Barack Obama, Jeff Bezos, Joe Biden, Apple, Uber, Kanye West, Mike Bloomberg, Kim Kardashian.
Then it was the turn of major cryptocurrency accounts on Twitter, including Gemini, Coinbase and Binance. Even Cash App too was compromised.
It’s unclear, though, if this later batch of hacks are connected to the first, as the strategy was different.
ALL MAJOR CRYPTO TWITTER ACCOUNTS HAVE BEEN COMPROMISED.
2FA / strong password was used for @Gemini account. We are investigating and hope to have more information shortly. https://t.co/X3C0uJzc6C
— Cameron Winklevoss (@winklevoss) July 15, 2020
Things get worse:
It seems like people are actually falling for the scam, and are sending lots and lots of money into the bitcoin wallet, hoping to get it doubled.
It's an actual wallet address and there are transactions happening. It's unclear if these transactions are legit. Scammers often seed their own scams to give them the appearance of authenticity. https://t.co/GUHEDaKNxu pic.twitter.com/xfhl3817xr
— Ryan Mac ? (@RMac18) July 15, 2020
Twitter has released a statement saying they’re aware of the “security incident” and are working to fix it.
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) July 15, 2020
And, according to Twitter users, it seems like the fix involves verified users not being able to use their accounts temporarily.
Twitter has temporally blocked all verified accounts from Tweeting while the Bitcoin hack is taking over. pic.twitter.com/SBwophl38o
— Pop Crave (@PopCrave) July 15, 2020
This is a wild one. Hopefully the fix is done fast, as the hack could do great damage to people across the world.
