Published 09:08 IST, July 16th 2020

Twitter hacked but Donald Trump escapes: Here's why the US President's account got away

On Wednesday, a number of high profile Twitter accounts including that of Elon Musk, Bill Gates, Joe Biden & Apple were hacked. President Trump's account wasn't

Reported by: Jay Pandya
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On Wednesday, a number of high profile Twitter accounts including that of US Presidential hopeful Joe Biden, Tesla CEO Elon Musk, Microsoft Co-founder Bill Gates and of Apple were simultaneously hacked by attackers to carry out what appeared to be a cryptocurrency scam.

'A special kind of lock-and-key'

However, United States President Donald Trump's account wasn't hacked. Trump, with 83.5 million followers is an avid user of platform and frequently tweets his personal and political views. A New York Times report quoting officials said security breach did t affect Trump's account because it is under a 'special kind of lock-and-key' after past incidents

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In 2017, a rogue worker at company used ir access to Twitter’s systems to briefly delete President Trump’s Twitter account. account was restored within minutes, but incident raised questions about Twitter’s security.

In a statement released by Twitter three hours later, it was revealed that  account had been “inadvertently deactivated due to human error by a Twitter employee,” Twitter anunced that a rogue customer support worker had done it on his or her last day at company.

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'We all feel terrible this happened'

Meanwhile, on Wednesday, fake tweets offered to send $2,000 for every $1,000 sent to a bitcoin address. Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey in a tweet said, "Tough day for us at Twitter. We all feel terrible this happened."

Twitter put out a statement ting that it was aware of a “security incident impacting accounts on Twitter.” company said it is investigating and working to fix it, and promised an update shortly.

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Twitter also halted ability for some accounts to send new tweets following a massive hacker attack on social media website. "You may be unable to Tweet or reset your password while we review and address incident," Twitter Support tweeted.

READ | Bitcoin scammers hack Twitter accounts of Barack Obama, Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk

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READ | Former US President Barack Obama, Joe Biden in list of those hacked by Bitcoin scammers

'I am giving back to community'

'I am giving back to community. All Bitcoin sent to address below will be sent back doubled! If you send $1000, I will send back $2000. Only doing this for 30 minutes!" Joe Biden's w-deleted tweet read.

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apparent scam has also caught attention of FBI. "We are aware of today's security incident involving several Twitter accounts belonging to high profile individuals," CNN quoted FBI's San Francisco field office as saying in a statement. " accounts appear to have been compromised in order to perpetuate cryptocurrency fraud. We advise public t to fall victim to this scam by sending cryptocurrency or money in relation to this incident."

READ | Twitter issues statement after major security lapse, launches Bitcoin scam investigation

READ | Twitter blocked verified handles before restoring accounts as it probed Bitcoin scam

09:08 IST, July 16th 2020