Twitter Accounts Of Many Influencers Hacked In Crypto Scam
On Wednesday, several high-profile accounts on Twitter were hacked by attackers. They used these accounts to spread a message for crypto-currency scam. Some of the accounts that were hacked include Elon Musk, Bill Gates, Barack Obama, Kim Kardashian West, Jeff Bezos, YouTuber MrBeast, Wendy’s, Wiz Khalifa, Warren Buffett, Mike Bloomberg, and many others.
The message and many other posts shared on these accounts were promoting the address of a bitcoin wallet and claimed the amount to be paid to the address would be doubled. While it’s still not certain how the attackers broke in but according to the report, hackers leveraged an internal admin tool to gain access. On Wednesday evening, Twitter confirmed the incident by tweeting that “a coordinated social engineering attack” on employees gave a hacker access to internal systems.
It has become quite clear that the hackers focus on cryptocurrency-based accounts as @bitcoin, @ripple, @coindesk, @coinbase, and @binance were initially hacked. The same message posted on all these accounts was: “We have partnered with CryptoForHealth and are giving back 5000 BTC to the community,” followed by a link to a website. The company quickly pulled the linked site offline. However, as the incident went on, hacked accounts were quick to their shift addresses to multiple bitcoin wallets which make it more difficult to track.
Also Read: Twitter Claims 130 Accounts Were Compromised But Fails To Answers If Attackers Accessed DMs
The company’s spokesperson for Binance said: “The security team is actively investigating the situation of this coordinated attack on the crypto industry.”
On Wednesday afternoon, exactly at 2:45 p.m. PT, Twitter had first acknowledged the situation which is referred to as a security incident. But after the issues continued, many verified accounts on the app reported being unable to tweet.
The official Support account confirmed, “[Users] may be unable to Tweet or reset your password while we review and address this incident.” The company said that tweeting is expected to go back normal but the company will continue working on fixing its functionality.
The fake blockchain address had already collected more than 12.5 bitcoin and is going up every minute Even though it is not immediately known how the hack took place, security researchers have found that the when the attackers took over victims’ accounts they have changed their email address to make it difficult for the real user to regain access.