One of the largest social media accounts hacks ever took place around 10.00 PM EAT when prominent accounts were compromised with the hacker pumping a bitcoin giveaway scam associated with the ‘Crypto For Health’ organization.
The Twitter takeover went on for several hours before the situation was arrested. Hundreds of thousands of dollars in bitcoin have already been stolen following the Twitter hack.
SEE ALSO: The FBI Lists 4 Universal Crypto Scams You Need to Be Wary of Related to the COVID-19 Pandemic
Below is a list of all the high-profile and prominent accounts that got got hijacked in rapid succession:
- Elon Musk
- Bill Gates
- Joe Biden
- Barack Obama
- Michael Bloomberg
- Apple
- Uber
- Jeff Bezos
- Kanye West
- Kim Kardashian
- Warren Buffet
- Wiz Khalifa
- MrBeast
- Binance
- Coinbase
- Cash App
- Gemini
- Charlie Lee
- Bitcoin.org
- Kucoin
- Bitfinex
- Ripple
- Coindesk
- Justin Sun
- CZ Binance
- Tron Foundation
It took a while before Twitter deleted the pinned messages and about three hours before the accounts were restored to full functionality.
However the hacker was back again for a second and third round of attack with messages which read:
“I’m giving back to the community.
All Bitcoin sent to the address below will be sent back doubled! If you send $1, 000, I will send back $2, 000.
Only doing this for 30 minutes
bc1qxy2kgdygjrsqtzq2n0yrf2493p83kkfjhx0wlh
Enjoy!
The hacked accounts collectively had over 140 million followers.
Twitter has put out a statement and said the hacker apparently leveraged an internal admin tool to gain access to all these high-profile accounts via a coordinated social engineering attack on employees who gave the hacker access to the tools.
We know they used this access to take control of many highly-visible (including verified) accounts and Tweet on their behalf. We’re looking into what other malicious activity they may have conducted or information they may have accessed and will share more here as we have it.
— Twitter Support (@TwitterSupport) July 16, 2020
Prominent and recognized authorities and media outlets took to Twitter to express their opinions on the hack which led to Bitcoin becoming a top-trending topic in the United States and other parts of the world.
JUST IN: Bill Gates, Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos are among the high-profile social media accounts apparently hacked to promote a Bitcoin scam https://t.co/QKOwgcQA7q
— Bloomberg (@business) July 15, 2020
"Tough day for us at Twitter. We all feel terrible", tweets CEO Jack Dorsey as the verified accounts of US billionaires and politicians are hacked in a bitcoin scam https://t.co/XS2dpUCPAU
— BBC World Service (@bbcworldservice) July 16, 2020
Many verified Twitter accounts able to post again after hacking https://t.co/oyqxi8BPrZ pic.twitter.com/txtEkEqxnX
— Reuters (@Reuters) July 16, 2020
Twitter accounts belonging to Bill Gates, Elon Musk, Apple and Uber, among other prominent handles, were apparently hacked https://t.co/E3mtrjgmMs
— CNN Breaking News (@cnnbrk) July 15, 2020
Where were you the day every major Twitter account was compromised in a gigantic Bitcoin scam?
— Marques Brownlee (@MKBHD) July 15, 2020
Breaking: A number of high profile Twitter accounts have been hacked to spread a cryptocurrency scam.https://t.co/dWFgVH4J2k
— TechCrunch (@TechCrunch) July 15, 2020
JUST IN: Twitter accounts of Uber and Apple, following those of Bill Gates and Elon Musk, have been hacked in a Bitcoin scam
— The Spectator Index (@spectatorindex) July 15, 2020
The Twitter accounts of Joe Biden, Barack Obama, Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, Elon Musk and several others were compromised and sent out tweets on Wednesday asking for Bitcoin, promising to “double all payments." https://t.co/JNF8a2QNr4
— CNBC (@CNBC) July 16, 2020
The crypto community has reacted with mixed feelings regarding the hack with some one side expressing positive sentiments towards greater popularization of bitcoin while others see it as bad publicity for bitcoin.
Twitter was hacked.
Bitcoin has never been hacked.
— Pomp 🌪 (@APompliano) July 16, 2020
This is not how we wanted @BillGates to use Bitcoin 🙃 https://t.co/DUKwRZD4KT
— Bitcoin Magazine (@BitcoinMagazine) July 15, 2020
https://twitter.com/naval/status/1283507218294292481
The recent twitter hack of Apple, Musk, and Gates is straight out of every blockchain talk I have given about the value of #blockchain and hardware keys. Its time for twitter to adopt blockchain, in the mean time #voice already uses blockchain tech!
— Daniel Larimer (@bytemaster7) July 15, 2020
This is a Twitter scam, not a cryptocurrency scam. In the same way that when a Nigerian prince asked me to wire him $100,000, it was an email scam, not a US dollar scam. https://t.co/wR3YP6RUbA
— Jeff Dorman, CFA (@jdorman81) July 15, 2020
I felt a great disturbance in the timeline, as if thousands of verified voices cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced.
— Jameson Lopp (@lopp) July 16, 2020
I love this tweet by @PeterSchiff. It is a perfect example of how #Bitcoin continues to sneak up on people who refuse to understand it. It also demonstrates the misunderstanding that @Twitter accounts being hacked somehow = $BTC being hacked 😂 https://t.co/VLrjzMRjqh
— Tone Vays (@ToneVays) July 15, 2020
Crypto exchanges have already gone ahead and started blacklisting the accounts used siphon money from unsuspecting victims.
Earlier today, Twitter accounts were hijacked in an attempt to trick individuals into sending bitcoin to addresses owned by the attackers. @Gemini immediately added these addresses to our blocklist to prevent our customers from inadvertently falling victim to this scam. pic.twitter.com/4CRqZiOPRX
— Tyler Winklevoss (@tyler) July 16, 2020
https://twitter.com/alexstamos/status/1283520780362321920
Huobi has backlisted the address associated with the #twitterhack We will pay close attention to these assets and it’s transactions.
As always we stand united and will do our part to keep the crypto community safe.#Twitterhacked
— Huobi (@HuobiGlobal) July 16, 2020
.@OKEx has instantly added the hackers addresses to our blocklist, and will block all transactions between our platform and these addresses. #TwitterHacked We're in this together, and endeavour to prevent our users from falling to the scam.
Be vigilant.
— jay_star.okx ⚛️ OKX CEO (@star_okx) July 16, 2020
Binance has also put out a statement saying:
Binance has blacklisted all associated wallet addresses for withdrawals of this Twitter hacker, and we are continuing to take swift action in response to stop these scams from spreading.
The hacker’s wallets are not associated with Binance, and we have blocked Binance wallet addresses from depositing assets into the hacker’s addresses.
It will be interesting to see how cryptocurrencies will be viewed in the next couple of days following this major incident.
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