Major businesses and individuals’ Twitter accounts have been hacked in one of the most extensive and confusing hacks the site has ever seen, all in the name of promoting a bitcoin scam that seems to be making quite a bit of money to its creator.
New scam tweets were frequently posted to the verified accounts beginning shortly after 8 PM GMT (Greenwich Mean Time) and lasting over two hours.
We are aware of a security incident impacting accounts on Twitter. We are investigating and taking steps to fix it. We will update everyone shortly.
— Twitter Support (@TwitterSupport) July 15, 2020
At around 10 PM GMT Twitter took an unprecedented measure for the first time in its history- it prevented verified accounts from tweeting at all.
We’re continuing to limit the ability to Tweet, reset your password, and some other account functionalities while we look into this. Thanks for your patience.
— Twitter Support (@TwitterSupport) July 15, 2020
At 00:41 AM GMT +1 Day, Twitter said
Most accounts should be able to Tweet again. As we continue working on a fix, this functionality may come and go. We’re working to get things back to normal as quickly as possible.
— Twitter Support (@TwitterSupport) July 16, 2020
“Tough day for us at Twitter. We all feel terrible that this happened. We’re diagnosing and will share everything we can when we have a more complete understanding of exactly what happened”, wrote Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey later in the evening addressing the issue.
The confusion started when the Twitter account of Tesla CEO Elon Musk was apparently hacked by a hacker plan to use it to run a bitcoin scam. Apparently the same scammer also accessed the account of Microsoft’s co-founder Bill Gates, who posted a similar message with an identical Bitcoin wallet address.
Almost as quickly as they were deleted, both accounts continued to post new tweets promoting the scam. Especially Musk ‘s account was still under the hacker ‘s control till as late as 9:56 PM GMT.
The accounts of Apple, former President Barack Obama, Uber, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, hip-hop mogul Kanye West, Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden and former New York City mayor and billionaire Mike Bloomberg were also compromised and began to promote this scam shortly after the initial wave of tweets from Gates and Musk ‘s accounts.
Company accounts of Cash App, Gemini cryptocurrency and Coinbase were also hacked.
Though the extent of the complete scan is unclear it seems to have affected numerous major companies and extremely high-profile people. The nature of the attack suggests the possibility that somebody, or a group, has either found a severe security loophole in Twitter’s login or account recovery process or third-party apps — or that the perpetrator has somehow gained access to the admin privileges of a Twitter employee.
Reports suggest that numerous underground hacking circles shared screenshots of an internal Twitter administration tool supposedly used to take over verified high profile accounts.
Musk has long been the victim of bitcoin scammers on Twitter. To appear legitimate most of them create fake accounts designed to look like the businessman and respond to his tweets promoting the scams. Earlier, Twitter had locked up some accounts that changed their name to “Elon Musk,” and the company listed cryptocurrency scammers as a known source of exploitation in 2018.
Twitter is currently removing screenshot images of the scam messages from its website and in some cases suspending users who continue to share them. No official information has been shared regarding how the hacks were carried out.
