Twitter Hack: Obama, Elon Musk, Apple & others hit in Bitcoin scam; Here's All We Know

On June 16, a number of high-profile celebrities with verified Twitter accounts fell prey to Bitcoin hackers in one of Twitter's biggest security breaches in its history. Accounts of prominent personalities along likes of Barack Obama, Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Kanye West, Joe Biden, were hacked by Bitcoin scammers, who circulated spam messs from ir profiles asking people to donate money to a Bitcoin wallet address embedded as a link. With Twitter recording one of its worst infringements of privacy, here's all that we kw about unprecedented hacking scam. 

What happened? 

 scam was traced when Elon Musk’s account issued a tweet at 4:17PM ET that read - “I‘m feeling generous because of Covid-19. I’ll double any BTC payment sent to my BTC address for next hour. Good luck, and stay safe out re!” Soon after, identical tweet was posted from account of Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates’ account. reafter, a wave of tweets with fake promotion was posted from accounts of personalities like Barack Obama, Kanye West, Joe Biden, Mike Bloomberg, and Warren Buffet. 

Twitter issues first response

After maintaining almost an hour of silence, Twitter in its first response at 5:45PM ET said that y are investigating hacking attack and taking steps to fix it. “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.” In an unprecedented move, Twitter blocked verified handles from posting anything, as it launched an investigation.

Who all were hacked? 

Twitter accounts of Barack Obama, Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, along with or major names like Kanye West, Joe Biden, Mike Bloomberg, and Warren Buffet were hacked. Twitter accounts of Apple, Uber, Square’s CashApp, and Coinbase were also hacked with intent to post similar messs which contained a bitcoin wallet address that was directed to hackers.

'Coordinated social engineering attack', says Twitter

In latest update provided by Twitter, social media giant said that attackers who targetted ir employees used this access to take control of many highly-visible (including verified) accounts and Tweet on ir behalf. It added that while investigation was on, y were clear that it was a 'Coordinated social engineering attack', adding that 'most functionalities had been restored.' Twitter furr said that it had locked accounts which had been compromised and that it will lift lock once it's secure to do so.  

'Tough day,' says Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey

Shortly after this, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey issued a statement calling it a 'tough day', revealing that everyone at Twitter feels 'terrible' about incident. accounts were restored after almost two hours, however, Dorsey did t provide any details on how exactly and to what extent Twitter's own systems may have been compromised. He, however, assured that company will share 'everything y can', once y have 'more complete understanding of exactly what happened.'

As per reports,  bitcoin wallet has amassed over $100,000 within last few hours after hackers spammed into verified accounts. Here is a list of everyone who was hacked. 

Read: Former US President Barack Obama, Joe Biden In List Of Those Hacked By Bitcoin Scammers

Read: BitTorrent CEO Justin Sun Anunces $1 Million Bounty On Bitcoin Scammers, Decries Hacking