Dozens of high-profile Twitter accounts were seemingly hacked in a massive Bitcoin scam on Wednesday afternoon, each of them posting, with each account tweeting out messages offering anyone thousands of dollars with of cryptocurrency.
Former president Barack Obama, Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, Tesla CEO Elon Musk, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, Kanye West, and former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg all fell victim to the hack. Tech companies like Apple and Uber also posted the scam message.
Each hacked account tweeted that they will double payments sent to their BTC addresses within the next half hour. The tweets have since been deleted from most accounts. The scam appeared to be at least somewhat successful — according to Blockchain.com, more than $100,000 had been sent to the Bitcoin wallet posted in the messages.
A Twitter spokesperson told Digital Trends that it was looking into the issue but could not provide additional details.
The attack was likely the most high profile and successful hack in Twitter’s history. The widespread nature of the scam messages make it likely that Twitter itself was hacked, rather than individual accounts. Cameron Winklevoss, co-founder of the Gemini cryptocurrency exchange, said that its Twitter account had a strong password and two-factor authentication enabled, but was still hacked.
Kanye West and Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos also tweeted out the scam on Wednesday.
Which accounts have been hacked in the Bitcoin Twitter scam?
- Joe Biden
- Elon Musk
- Bill Gates
- Kanye West
- Michael Bloomberg
- Jeff Bezos
- Apple
- Uber
- Coinbase
- Coindesk
- Ripple
- Binance
- Gemini
- Wiz Khalifa
- CashApp
This is a breaking news story and will be updated.
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