With the US Presidential election only months away, this is an especially concerning incident. A number of high-profile Twitter accounts were simultaneously hacked on Wednesday by attackers who used the accounts. Some with millions of followers – to spread a cryptocurrency scam.
High Profile Accounts Got Hacked
Billionaires Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates are among many prominent US figures targeted by hackers on Twitter in an apparent Bitcoin scam.
The official accounts of Barack Obama, Joe Biden, and Kanye West also requested donations in the cryptocurrency.
Twitter hacked. Twitter said it was a “coordinated” attack targeting its employees “with access to internal systems and tools”.
“We know they [the hackers] used this access to take control of many highly-visible (including verified) accounts and Tweet on their behalf,” the company said in a series of tweets.
Both Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey and product lead Kayvon Beykpour have apologized for the incident.
List of Verified Accounts Who got Hacked
Among a range of verified profiles, the hackers gained access to the accounts of:
- Kanye West
- Joe Biden
- Bill Gates
- Apple
- Jeff Bezos
- Elon Musk
- Uber
- Mike Bloomberg
- Floyd Mayweather
- Barack Obama
- HQ Trivia
- Warren Buffet
- Kim Kardashian
Federal Bureau of Investigation
The FBI has since reported that it will be leading a federal inquiry into the incident.
As noted, the incident is a major concern for Twitter’s security. And while Twitter is still working out the specifics of how the hackers managed to gain access to these accounts. Because various concerns have been raised as to the breadth of issues that such capacity could cause. With some even suggesting that hacks of this type could spark increased global tensions.
We’ve also been taking aggressive steps to secure our systems while our investigations are ongoing. We’re still in the process of assessing longer-term steps that we may take, and we’ll share more details as soon as we can.”
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