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A number of high-profile accounts on Twitter were simultaneously targeted by a hacker on Wednesday, July 15, 2020. The attacker then used the compromised social media accounts to spread a cryptocurrency scam to their millions of followers.
Among the Twitter accounts that were breached by the attacks belong to Elon Musk, Joe Biden, and Apple, according to TechCrunch. The hacker posted a message on using the accounts that encourage people to send Bitcoin(BTC) to a crypto wallet. In return, the message promised that those who sent funds will have their money doubled, which is a common style of a cryptocurrency scam.
“I am giving back to the community,” the hacker posted using Joe Biden’s Twitter account. “All Bitcoin sent to the address below will be sent back doubled! If you send $1,000, I will send back $2,000! Only doing this for 30 minutes.”
It was also later learned that the hack affected other celebrities as well. The Twitter accounts of Microsoft founder Bill Gates, Amazon boss Jeff Bezos, former POTUS Barack Obama, billionaire investor Warren Buffet, “KUWTK” star Kim Kardashian West, Mike Bloomberg, Wendy’s, Uber, CashApp and YouTuber MrBeast also posted similar messages promoting the cryptocurrency scam.
Twitter acknowledged the hack and promised that they’ll fix it right away. “We are aware of a security incident impacting accounts on Twitter,” the company wrote on July 16 at 5:45 AM via Twitter Support. “We are investigating and taking steps to fix it. We will update everyone shortly.”
A few hours later, the company released an update. “Our investigation is still ongoing but here’s what we know so far,” Twitter Support posted a message. “We detected what we believe to be a coordinated social engineering attack by people who successfully targeted some of our employees with access to internal systems and tools.”
Meanwhile, a person “with direct knowledge of the incident” confirmed to TechCrunch that the hacker used Twitter’s “admin” toll to hijack the accounts. The hacker, who reportedly goes by the name of “Kirk,” was able to receive over $100,000 in a matter of hours after posting the cryptocurrency scam on the hacked Twitter accounts.
