By Aaron Miller-
Billionaires Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates were targeted by hackers on Twitter in t Bitcoin scam that exposed major flaws in twitter’s security system.
The official accounts of Barack Obama, Joe Biden and Kanye West also requested donations in the cryptocurrency.
Barack Obama, Joe Bidden and Apple also fell victim to the major scam in one of the most widespread and confounding hacks the platform has ever seen, all in service of promoting a bitcoin scam that appears to be earning its creator quite a bit of money.
The hack is ongoing, with new tweets posting to verified accounts on a regular basis starting shortly after 4PM ET. Twitter acknowledged the situation after more than an hour of silence, writing on its support account, “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
“Everyone is asking me to give back, and now is the time,” a tweet from Mr Gates’s account said. “You send $1,000, I send you back $2,000.”
The tweets were deleted just minutes after they first were posted.
All verified Twitter accounts marked with a blue tick have now been stopped from posting any tweets, with password reset requests are also being denied.
Twitter said it was looking into the incident and would issue a statement soon.On the official account of Mr Musk, the Tesla and SpaceX chief appeared to offer to double any Bitcoin payment sent to the address of his digital wallet “for the next hour”.
“I’m feeling generous because of Covid-19,” the tweet added, along with a Bitcoin link address.
The twitter accounts of Mike Bloomberg and Kim Kardashian were also hacked.
These “double your Bitcoin” scams have been a persistent pest on Twitter for years but this is unprecedented with the actual accounts of public figures hijacked and on a large scale
The multiple accounts compromised simultaneously exposes a problem with Twitter’s platform itself.
Strong speculations that someone managed to access administration privileges have been dismissed because of the slim probability that one or two people would have been able to obtain passwords for several twitter accounts belonging to high profile individuals.
The hackers were on a mission to maximise funds without concern for the potential damage to the reputations of those it was hacking.Twitter has been the subject of much criticism over the years for its sluggishness in addressing abuse of its platform, particularly with respect to sexual harassment and racism. This time the giant social media company moved fast to contain the security breaches.