Obama, Musk, Gates and other high-profile Twitter accounts hacked in Bitcoin scam

By Harriet Piercy

Published Jul 16, 2020 at 12:19 PM

Reading time: 2 minutes

7710

If last night, like many, you saw a tweet offering a generous proposal such as Barack Obama’s “I am giving back to my community. All Bitcoin sent to my address below will be sent back doubled,” and wondered what Obama was going on about, let’s be clear, it was a hack.

Obama, Musk, Gates and other high-profile Twitter accounts hacked in Bitcoin scam

Who got hacked on Twitter, and how?

Elon Musk, Bill Gates, Joe Biden, Jeff Bezos, Kanye West, Apple, Uber—the list of high-profile people and companies that got their Twitter accounts hacked goes on, including leading cryptocurrency sites. The profiles were obviously targeted for their high following count in order to spread the scam as widely as possible.

Twitter announced that it had detected what it believed to be a “coordinated engineering attack by people who successfully targeted some of our employees with access to internal systems and tools.” TechCrunch was told by a source involved in the underground hacking scene that the hacker who goes by the handle ‘Kirk’ generated over $100,000 in a matter of hours. By gaining access to Twitter’s admin tool, Kirk used it to reset email addresses of the accounts affected which made it more difficult for the rightful owners to regain control.

The source, who remains anonymous, also told TechCrunch that Kirk started out by selling stolen usernames on social media, a somewhat popular, yet very illegal business. These usernames sell from anywhere between a few hundred dollars to thousands. There is a popular forum among traders of hacked social media handles, called OGUsers, which Kirk is shown to have contacted. Screenshots of a chat between a ‘trusted member’ and the hacker were shared with TechCrunch, where he said “Send me @’s and BTC,” which refers to Twitter usernames and cryptocurrency.

The screenshots show that Kirk also had access to the internal administrative tool on Twitter’s network. It is currently unknown how exactly Kirk managed to gain access to Twitter’s internal tool, but it has been hypothesised that an employee’s account was hijacked, which then allowed Kirk into the company’s internal network.

What is being done by Twitter to put an end to the hacks?

Twitter has declared that once the company became aware of the attack, it “locked down the affected accounts and removed tweets posted by the attackers.” As a precaution, it also limited access for accounts that had been verified with a blue check.

CEO Jack Dorsey tweeted that it had been a “tough day for us at Twitter.” He added, “We all feel terrible this happened. We’re diagnosing and will share everything we can when we have a more complete understanding of exactly what happened.”

The popular Bitcoin exchange Coinbase has blocked its users from sending money to the address advertised via the affected accounts. While Twitter continues to investigate, cybersecurity experts have begun speculating on other potential sources of the breach. Twitter has stated that it is “working to get things back to normal as quickly as possible.”

The company has said that “Internally, we’ve taken significant steps to limit access to internal systems and tools while our investigation is ongoing.” It remains unknown who is behind the attack.

Keep On Reading

By Eliza Frost

Everyone’s posing like Nicki Minaj: the TikTok trend explained 

By Eliza Frost

Misogyny, sexism, and the manosphere: how this year’s Love Island UK has taken a step backwards

By Alma Fabiani

The disturbing TikTok trend sexualising fake Down syndrome faces using AI filters

By Eliza Frost

Taylor Swift announces new album on Travis Kelce’s podcast. Everything we know about TS12 so far

By Eliza Frost

Renters’ Rights Bill becomes law; this is what it means for you

By Eliza Frost

Netflix’s Adolescence sweeps Emmys, with star Owen Cooper making history as youngest-ever male winner

By Eliza Frost

How Jet2holidays and Jess Glynne became the sound of the summer

By Eliza Frost

What is Shrekking? The latest toxic dating trend explained 

By Eliza Frost

Zohran Mamdani wins New York City mayoral race, and wife Rama Duwaji becomes city’s Gen Z first lady 

By Charlie Sawyer

How influencer Liv Schmidt promotes toxic eating habits through the Skinni Société 

By Eliza Frost

Controversial American Apparel owner just opened LA Apparel in NYC and TikTok girlies are flocking to shop

By Eliza Frost

Bad timing? Gavin Casalegno’s Dunkin’ ad sparks backlash over actor’s alleged conservative views

By Eliza Frost

Jennifer Lawrence weighs in on The Summer I Turned Pretty love triangle, revealing she is Team Jeremiah

By Eliza Frost

American Eagle and Sydney Sweeney face backlash with employee’s LinkedIn post adding fuel to the fire

By Eliza Frost

Everything to know about Justin Lee Fisher, arrested at Travis Kelce’s home over Taylor Swift deposition papers from Justin Baldoni

By Eliza Frost

Bad Bunny is not touring the US due to fear of ICE raids at concerts

By Eliza Frost

Jennifer Aniston to star in Apple TV+ adaptation of Jennette McCurdy’s memoir I’m Glad My Mom Died

By Eliza Frost

Does the SKIMS Face Wrap actually work, or is it just another TikTok trap?

By Charlie Sawyer

From breaking up families to spreading rumours about Joe Biden’s death, here’s what QAnons been up to

By Eliza Frost

Online pornography showing choking to be made illegal, says government