Published 13:29 IST, July 16th 2020
Twitter Bitcoin hack explained: What exactly happened during the hack?
Twitter Bitcoin hack explained: Read to know about the infamous hack on Twitter which cammed users of reportedly $100,000 in cryptocurrency.
- Tech
- 2 min read
Official accounts of prominent celebrities like Elon Musk, Barack Obama, Bill Gates, Kim Kardashian and various others were hacked to promote a bitcoin scam. During the hack, some of the cryptocurrency websites were also affected. As of now, there hasn't been any concrete information as to who was behind this notorious cryptocurrency scam. The support page of Twitter has come forward and shared that they have locked accounts that were compromised and will restore them only when they are certain about its security.
Twitter Bitcoin scam explained
The hack came to light when tweets requesting donations in cryptocurrency by prominent personalities like Barack Obama, Elon Musk and Bill Gates started doing the rounds on the platform. The tweets urged users to donate in Bitcoins with a promise to receive double in return. As per reports, over $100,000 in Bitcoins have been scammed from users during this hack. There are no details as to how many came forward and donated in Bitcoins.
Official accounts of tech companies like Apple and Uber also fell prey to the hack whereas Mike Bloomberg and boxer Floyd Mayweather were some of the other personalities who were targetted. The social media platform later came forward and addressed the situation and restricted the ability to tweet or reset the password for some users in order to stop the hack from increasing furthermore. The restrictions were later removed when Twitter announced that it has detected a coordinated social engineering attack by hackers who initially targetted employees of the company who had access to sensitive data like internal systems and tools.
As per reports, the hacker or the group of hackers responsible first gained access to Twitter's company network which allowed them to infiltrate accounts of famous personalities. It is expected that over 300 transactions took place during the time of the hack. Reports claim that information related to the Twitter admin tool comes from people having direct knowledge of the framework, possibly, an employee of Twitter itself. Though, the company has not come forward and revealed the same. It is expected that Twitter's support group will provide detailed information about the Bitcoin scam hack soon.
Updated 13:29 IST, July 16th 2020