Twitter says around 130 people targeted in bitcoin scam hack
Twitter has said around 130 accounts were targeted by hackers in an incident that led to the accounts of high profile figures such as US presidential candidate Joe Biden posting messages asking for bitcoin.
The hack has caused embarrassment for Twitter and raised questions about its safety ahead of the 2020 presidential election.
Tesla owner Elon Musk, Amazon owner Jeff Bezos and Microsoft founder Bill Gates were some of the other high-profile accounts that were hacked.
Twitter today said the hackers only gained access and were able to tweet from a small subset of the accounts they targeted.
It said: “We’re working with impacted account owners and will continue to do so over the next several days.”
“We are continuing to assess whether non-public data related to these accounts was compromised, and will provide updates if we determine that occurred.”
The FBI’s San Francisco division also said it is leading an inquiry into the hacking.
Bitcoin hack embarrasses Twitter
The hack saw a number of high-profile accounts with the blue authenticity tick tweet asking for the digital currency bitcoin. The tweets typically promised to double people’s investment in a scam.
Bill Gates’ tweet said: “Everyone is asking me to give back. You send $1,000, I send you back $2,000.”
Apple’s read: “We are giving back to our community. We support Bitcoin and we believe you should too! All Bitcoin sent to our address below will be sent back to you doubled!”
Around $100,000 was received in the first hour of the attack according to Blockchain.com. The scammers are thought to have duped around 350 people.
Twitter added that it has been taking “aggressive” steps to make the social media website more secure. It said it is in the process of assessing longer-term security changes that it may make.