Hackers take over Twitter accounts of Gates, Musk, Biden, Bloomberg, Apple and others in crypto scam
Bill Gates and Elon Musk had their Twitter accounts hacked Wednesday afternoon in an apparent cryptocurrency giveaway scam. Other accounts including Apple, Uber, Square’s CashApp, Coinbase, Mike Bloomberg, and Kanye West were also hacked. Update: Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos and presidential candidate Joe Biden were also hacked.
The tweet above was posted from Gates’ account at 1:34 p.m. PT, but was then deleted. The same tweet from Gates appeared at 1:48 p.m. PT.
“We can confirm that this tweet was not sent by Bill Gates,” a spokesperson for Bill Gates told GeekWire. “This appears to be part of a larger issue that Twitter is facing. Twitter is aware and working to restore the account.”
A tweet from Musk was sent out just before 1:30 p.m. PT and was also deleted, before another appeared at 1:50 p.m. PT. Update: Another similar tweet appeared at 2:19 p.m. PT.
Looks like Elon may have been hacked pic.twitter.com/H3SbSU8NJI
— Mathew Ingram (@mathewi) July 15, 2020
Biden and Bezos were also hacked:
Here the tweets from Apple and Uber’s accounts:
Uber responded with this:
Like many others, our @Uber account was hit by a scammer today. The tweet has been deleted and we’re working directly with @Twitter to figure out what happened.
— Uber Comms (@Uber_Comms) July 15, 2020
A Twitter spokesperson said “we’re looking into this.” The company will share a statement soon. We’ll update the story as we learn more.
More than $100,000 had been funneled to the bitcoin address included in the tweets.
Twitter stock was down more than 3% in after-hours trading.
Here is more commentary from others:
UPDATE: @elonmusk, @CashApp and @Ripple also appear to be compromised, among other prominent accounts. CoinDesk has reached out to Twitter for comment. https://t.co/l0q5PwuJ32
— CoinDesk (@CoinDesk) July 15, 2020
ALL MAJOR CRYPTO TWITTER ACCOUNTS HAVE BEEN COMPROMISED.
2FA / strong password was used for @Gemini account. We are investigating and hope to have more information shortly. https://t.co/X3C0uJzc6C
— Cameron Winklevoss (@winklevoss) July 15, 2020
Wow – massive sitewide hack. Search on "doubling all payments" — it’s not just billlionaires spewing this…. https://t.co/9Hj3ofeyI4
— Mark Harris (@meharris) July 15, 2020
Many great security recommendations floating around after the big #twitterhack. But this was an inside job. Great passwords and 2FA wouldn’t help in this case.
— Aaron Pressman (@ampressman) July 15, 2020
I was wrong. This is 100% Twitter hack. No one is safe https://t.co/ISqtOh4ucI
— Larry Cermak (@lawmaster) July 15, 2020
The Verge noted that Musk has been targeted by bitcoin scammers in the past.
Story is developing…
it
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July 15, 2020 at 09:41PM
Taylor Soper
Stack IT News 