SOME of the world’s most prominent billionaires have been targets of a Bitcoin hacking scam on social media platform Twitter.
The US president’s favoured means of communication has fallen victim to a ruse targeting Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Kanye West, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates, among others.
Official accounts were apparently used, calling for donations in cryptocurrency and promising to double all contributions. “Everyone is asking me to give back,” a typical tweet read. “You send $1,000, I send you back $2,000.”
The co-ordinated attack apparently focused on Twitter employees with access to internal systems and tools. Twitter said steps had been taken to limit access during an on-going investigation. “We know (the hackers) used this access to take control of many highly-visible (including verified) accounts and Tweet on their behalf,” the company said.
Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey used his own platform to announce that it had been a “tough day for us at Twitter. We all feel terrible this happened”.
Kim Kardashian West, Mike Bloomberg, Uber and Apple were also targeted in the scam.
Twitter briefly blocked some verified accounts as a containment measure, with password reset requests denied. Other account functions were temporarily disabled while the company worked to patch the breach.
Offending tweets were deleted shortly after they were posted, but in some cases others appeared to take their place.
Investigations are on-going.
