Published 04:01 IST, July 16th 2020
Former US President Barack Obama, Joe Biden in list of those hacked by Bitcoin scammers
Twitter accounts of former President Barack Obama and presumptive Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden were also hacked by the bitcoin scammers on Jul 16
Twitter accounts of former President Barack Obama and presumptive Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden were also hacked by the bitcoin scammers on July 16.
Among other accounts compromised are Tesla CEO Elon Musk and Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates and Twitter accounts of Apple, Uber, Square’s CashApp. Hackers launched spams from Obama as well as Biden’s account which contained a similar bitcoin wallet address.
The tweets asked the Twitter users to transfer cryptocurrency that "will be sent back doubled." One of the tweets read, "Only doing this for the next 30 minutes! Enjoy”. Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates’ account also posted a similar message at 1:48 pm PT but then was quickly deleted.
Immediately, Twitter issued a statement stating that the team was “looking into this”. The company stated that it will share a statement soon.
From all of these accounts, a series of scam tweets were launched that read, "I‘m feeling greatful, doubling all payments sent to my BTC address.” The tweet also contained a bitcoin address, presumably one associated with the hacker’s crypto wallet.
Over $100,000 collected within last few hours
As per reports, the bitcoin wallet has amassed over $100,000 within the last few hours after hackers spammed into the verified accounts. Although, it still remains unclear if the funds came from users or the spammers themselves.
Further, celebrities including Kanye West also posted similar messages, some of the political figures such as former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg witnessed similar tweets shared from their accounts. The tweets were constantly deleted as fresh spams emerged despite two-factor authentications set on many of these celebrity accounts.
Earlier on July 15, a US House Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez had warned about the safety of the twitter accounts asking the general public not to click on any suspicious links issued from her social media account.“Hey everyone – there seems to be a large Twitter attack right now targeting large accounts,” she wrote. "Just in case, if my accounts tweet any bizarre links related to cryptocurrency, do NOT click on it.”
Updated 06:25 IST, July 16th 2020