Twitter investigating massive hack targeting big name users
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Twitter is investigating a massive hack in which high-profile users from Elon Musk to Joe Biden had their accounts hijacked by scammers, who the social network believes targeted its employees to gain access to internal systems.
Posts trying to dupe people into sending hackers the virtual currency Bitcoin were tweeted by the official accounts of Apple, Uber, Kanye West, Bill Gates, Barack Obama and hundreds of others on Wednesday.
US President Donald Trump鈥檚 account, which has more than 83 million followers, was not among those targeted.
鈥淲e detected what we believe to be a coordinated social engineering attack by people who successfully targeted some of our employees with access to internal systems and tools,鈥 Twitter said.
鈥淭hey used this access to take control of many highly-visible ... accounts,鈥 the company said, adding that it was investigating 鈥渨hat other malicious activity they may have conducted or information they may have accessed.鈥
The fraudulent posts, which were largely deleted, said people had 30 minutes to send US$1,000 in the cryptocurrency, promising they would receive twice as much in return.
One tweet from the account of Elon Musk, chief executive of Tesla, said: 鈥淚 am doubling all payments sent to the Bitcoin address below. You send US$1,000 and I will send US$2,000 back!鈥
The fake messages that appeared on other famous accounts made similar promises of instant riches.
One version of the scam invited people to click on a link at which they would be exploited.
The BBC reported that a website address in some of the tweets had been registered under the name 鈥淎nthony Elias,鈥 a play on the words 鈥渁n alias.鈥
A total of 12.58 bitcoins 鈥 worth almost US$116,000 鈥 were transferred to e-mail addresses mentioned in the tweets, according to the website Blockchain.com, which monitors crypto transactions.
鈥淭ough day for us at Twitter,鈥 chief executive Jack Dorsey said in a tweet.
鈥淲e all feel terrible this happened. We鈥檙e diagnosing and will share everything we can when we have a more complete understanding of exactly what happened.鈥
Twitter said it had locked down the affected accounts and removed the tweets posted by the hackers.
鈥淢ost accounts should be able to Tweet again,鈥 the Twitter support team said in an evening update, having earlier temporarily disabled all posts from verified accounts with an official blue check mark.
But the firm told users that it 鈥渕ay take further actions and will update you if we do.鈥
Several experts said the incident raised questions about Twitter鈥檚 security.
鈥淚t鈥檚 clear the company is not doing enough to protect itself,鈥 said Oren Falkowitz, former CEO of Area 1 Security.
US Senator Josh Hawley tweeted a letter to Dorsey, expressing concern over privacy for the San Francisco-based company鈥檚 millions of users worldwide.
鈥淚 am concerned that this event may represent not merely a coordinated set of separate hacking incidents but rather a successful attack on the security of Twitter itself,鈥 he said.
Shares of Twitter Inc dropped more than 4 percent in pre-market trading yesterday.
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