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 Charlie Sawyer

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

By Charlie Sawyer

Australian actor Joseph Zada cast as Haymitch Abernathy in upcoming Hunger Games prequel

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 Charlie Sawyer

Wednesday star Jenna Ortega reveals surprising dream role in recent interview

By Charlie Sawyer

Johnny Depp plays the victim once more and anoints himself crash test dummy for #MeToo

By Charlie Sawyer

Chris Brown is facing over 10 years in prison. Here’s how his violent past has led him here

By Charlie Sawyer

Bianca Censori to become the new face of SKIMS? Sources hint at Kim Kardashian alliance

By Alma Fabiani

Amazon Music is giving away 4 months free. Here’s how to claim it

By Fatou Ferraro Mboup

Celebrities call out Blue Origin for sending Katy Perry and Lauren Sánchez to space

By Fatou Ferraro Mboup

Trump launches his 2028 presidential campaign, ignoring constitutional limitations

By Eliza Frost

Bereavement leave to be extended to miscarriages before 24 weeks

By Charlie Sawyer

Odd Muse founder Aimee Smale fights back against fast fashion controversy on TikTok

By Fatou Ferraro Mboup

MrBeast hunts for volunteers to test the viral question: who would win between 100 men and one gorilla?

By Charlie Sawyer

This Oscar-winning actor is the top pick to play Voldemort in HBO Max Harry Potter reboot

By Eliza Frost

All the Tea on the new app that lets women vet men and date safely

By Charlie Sawyer

McDonald’s hit with new mass boycott. Here’s who’s behind it and why

By Eliza Frost

Skibidi, tradwife, and delulu are among new words added to Cambridge Dictionary for 2025

By Eliza Frost

How to spot a performative male out in the wild 

By Charlie Sawyer

Trump administration announces plan to offer US immigrants $1,000 to self-deport

By Eliza Frost

Kendall Jenner reveals plans to quit Kardashian fame for a normal job