Some of the world’s richest and most influential celebrities, politicians, tech moguls and companies were the victims of a massive Twitter hack on Wednesday. Joe Biden, Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Michael Bloomberg, Bill Gates and Kim Kardashian West were among the accounts publishing tweets asking followers to send money to a Bitcoin address.
Twitter described the attack as a co-ordinated one against its employees that have access to internal systems and tools. In a series of tweets, the company said, “We know they [the hackers] used this access to take control of many highly-visible (including verified) accounts and Tweet on their behalf,” the company said in a series of tweets. It also added that “significant steps” were being taken to restrict access to such internal systems and tools as the company continues investigation.
Meanwhile, Twitter CEO, Jack Dorsey tweeted: “Tough day for us at Twitter. We all feel terrible this happened.”
The motive for the hacking appears to be clear – make as much money as quickly as possible since the hackers would have known that the tweets they put out wouldn’t stay up for long.
The FBI’s San Francisco field office released a statement on Wednesday about the latest cyber-breach in which it said, “The accounts appear to have been compromised in order to perpetuate cryptocurrency fraud”. “We advise the public not to fall victim to this scam by sending cryptocurrency or money in relation to this incident.”
