The Twitter accounts of American personalities, including Bill Gates, Elon Musk or Joe Biden and Barack Obama, as well as large American companies, like Apple and Uber, were victims, Wednesday, July 15 in the afternoon, of a massive piracy of cryptocurrencies.
Messages, quickly erased by the targeted accounts, invited Internet users in particular to send bitcoins to specific addresses, claiming to send back in exchange double the amounts transferred.
“Happy Wednesday! I offer bitcoins to all my subscribers. I double all payments sent to the bitcoin address below “, notably read Twitter users on the account of Elon Musk, the boss of Tesla.
“A security incident”
The accounts of Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, Amazon boss Jeff Bezos, Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden, and former New York mayor Mike Bloomberg were posted for a while messages with similar content.
“We can confirm that this tweet was not sent by Bill Gates. This seems to be part of a larger problem facing Twitter. Twitter is aware and is working to restore the account »said a spokeswoman for Gates. The social network confirmed “A security incident” and said he was working on his resolution.
The company’s stock fell 4% on Wall Street in electronic trading after the close.
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