A massive hacking scheme popped up on Twitter on social media on Wednesday, seemingly drawing in notable celebrities and public figures like Bill Gates, Elon Musk, Joe Biden, and Kanye West into its orbit. The seemingly-coordinated hacks, which appear to be done by cryptocurrency scammers, popped up on the social media platform on Wednesday afternoon. The hack began to be noticed by a tweet from Musk’s account, which proclaimed that he was going to double any Bitcoin payment sent to “his” address for the next hour. Shortly after, the official accounts for Gates, Biden, West, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, former New York City mayor Mike Bloomberg, and former President Barack Obama also tweeted similar messages, all of which had the same Bitcoin address.
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The scam also made its way onto the social media accounts for various brands, including Apple and Uber. Various cryptocurrency-related Twitter accounts, including CoinDesk, Binance, Ripple, and Gemini, also appear to be hacked as well.
At the time of this writing, the tweets acknowledging the hack have been deleted. It is unclear exactly what the motive behind these hackings were, much less how the perpetrator ended up gaining access to so many high-profile accounts. The official Twitter Support account tweeted that they are aware of the incident and are “investigating 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.
— Twitter Support (@TwitterSupport) July 15, 2020
Cameron Winklevoss, who serves as a co-founder of Gemini, revealed that the company’s account uses two-factor authentication, which would theoretically make it more difficult for hackers to access the account.
ALL MAJOR CRYPTO TWITTER ACCOUNTS HAVE BEEN COMPROMISED.
2FA / strong password was used for @Gemini account. We are investigating and hope to have more information shortly. https://t.co/X3C0uJzc6C
— Cameron Winklevoss (@winklevoss) July 15, 2020
While the ordeal is obviously still unfolding, it has already become the subject of parody on social media, with the official Wendy’s Twitter account jokingly tweeting an address “Dave444spicy245nuggets10piece”, a reference to the company’s chicken nuggets.
We are giving back to the Twitter community.
All Tweets sent to the address below will be sent back doubled! If you tweet under this tweet we’ll tweet back twice. Only doing this for 30 minutes.
Dave444spicy245nuggets10piece
— Wendy’s (@Wendys) July 15, 2020
What do you think of Elon Musk, Barack Obama, and more being targeted by a Bitcoin scheme? Share your thoughts with us in the comments below!
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