The official accounts of Twitter Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and many other famous people and companies were hacked on Wednesday by scammers who tried to invite people to send them bitcoins promising to pay them back twice.
The list of simultaneously attacked accounts expanded rapidly to include those of the Democratic candidate for the White House, Joe Biden, former President Barack Obama, Microsoft billionaire founder Bill Gates, the Uber and Apple companies, and bitcoin platforms, among others. many.
Among the hacked are former President Barack Obama; its vice president and current presidential candidate, Joe Biden; tech tycoons Bill Gates and Elon Musk; the Apple company, the former mayor of New York and media businessman Michael Bloomberg; and the marriage formed by rapper Kanye West and Kim Kardashian. The scam invited to send money in bitcoins in exchange for receiving back double the amount drawn.
“We are attentive to a security incident that impacted accounts of Twitter“said the social network.” We are investigating and taking steps to solve it, “he added.
Biden’s campaign command closed his account Twitter and quickly removed the tweet that called deception.
Apparently, Twitter He disabled tweeting from certified accounts, that is, those with a blue label.
“You may not be able to tweet or create a new password as we review and correct this incident,” said the support team at Twitter.
The messages, which were mostly deleted, appeared in the accounts of numerous users of high notoriety. In the texts, people were told that they had 30 minutes to send $ 1,000 in bitcoin and they would get double back.
“It is a SCAM. DO NOT participate”, he warned in Twitter Cameron Winklevoss, co-founder of the Gemini cryptocurrency platform.
“Giving back”
The Blockchain.com site, which monitors cryptocurrency transactions, said that about 12.58 bitcoins, equivalent to about $ 116,000, were sent to the email address mentioned in the fraud tweets.
The tweet that was seen in Elon Musk’s account said: “Happy Wednesday! I am returning bitcoin to all my followers. I will double all payments sent to the Bitcoin address below. You send 0.1 BTC; I’ll refund 0.2 BTC! “
He added that the offer would only last 30 minutes.
The fake messages seen on other celebrity and business accounts had similar instantaneous wealth offerings. Scammers also hacked Uber’s account as well as those of companies that trade bitcoin.
President Donald Trump’s account, which has more than 83 million followers, was not hacked. “Given the recently hacked accounts (Apple, Uber, Gates, Musk, etc.), I now tend to think that what was compromised was the Twitter“said bitcoin expert Andreas Antonopoulos.
Rachel Tobac, of the social cybersecurity firm Proof Security, theorized that the hackers assumed the access power of some administrative official of Twitter to “take control of a prominent account and tweet on its behalf.”
A version of the scam invited people to activate a link that could be vulnerable. “All accounts of Twitter of cryptocurrencies have been compromised, “Winklevoss said in a tweet.
Among the hacked accounts is @gemini used for cryptocurrency transactions, according to company co-founder Tyler Winklevoss. “Bill Twitter @ Gemini’s along with others have been hacked, “Tyler Winklevoss tweeted.
Already in the past, Twitter It was attacked by cyber pirates. In March 2017, the accounts of Amnesty International, the French Ministry of Economy and the North American service of the BBC were attacked by pirates allegedly loyal to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
Last August, a series of insults or racist messages were published on the personal account of Jack Dorsey, founder of Twitter, without your knowledge.
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