It started with Elon Musk’s account sending out a tweet saying that he wanted to give back to fans. He promised to send two thousand dollars for every one thousand dollars that people sent to a specified account.
Following this, the same message started popping up on other accounts including Bill Gates, Barack Obama, Jeff Bezos, Joe Biden, Apple, Uber, Kanye West, Mike Bloomberg, Kim Kardashian.
Quickly, a host of other cryptocurrency accounts were compromised including Cash App, Gemini, Coinbase and Binance.
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 (@cameron) July 15, 2020
Worse, it looked like people were actually sending money to the bitcoin accounts as reports said that the scammers realized more than 100 thousand dollars in bitcoin from the scam.
JUST IN: Over $110,000 has been sent to Bitcoin scammers hacking prominent Twitter accounts
— The Spectator Index (@spectatorindex) July 15, 2020
Shortly after the scam began, Twitter shared a message stating that they are aware of the incident and are taking steps to fix the issue.
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
The fix looks to include disabling access to celebrities’ accounts which means that for now, your favourite celebrities will not be able to connect with you on Twitter. Hopefully, this gets fixed very soon.
Twitter has temporally blocked all verified accounts from Tweeting while the Bitcoin hack is taking over. pic.twitter.com/SBwophl38o
— Pop Crave (@PopCrave) July 15, 2020
Who will pay for the cryptos lost, Twitter or the people who fell victim? Cyber threat is very real.
Lmaooo.. this whole thing was just funny yesterday.