With the US Presidential election only months away, this is an especially concerning incident.
From about 1pm today, a range of celebrity and brand accounts started tweeting out a message promoting a crypto giveaway, in which funds sent to a specified account would send back double the same.
The messages, which are all similar, and all include the same bitcoin wallet address, are seemingly part of an elaborate hack – one of the largest ever seen on Twitter in terms of scale – with, a growing list of accounts currently being roped into the scam.
Thus far, the hackers have seemingly gained access to the accounts of:
- Kanye West
- Joe Biden
- Bill Gates
- Apple
- Jeff Bezos
- Elon Musk
- Uber
- Mike Bloomberg
- Floyd Mayweather
- Barack Obama
- HQ Trivia
- Warren Buffet
And people are indeed sending money through – as noted by The Verge, because the exchanges are publicly listed on the blockchain-based network, it’s possible to see the transactions transferring funds to the bitcoin wallet address listed in the tweets. More than $110k has been transferred through thus far.
The incident is a major concern for Twitter’s security, and while it’s unclear at this stage how, exactly, the hackers have seemingly gained access to these accounts, their messages, based on the follower numbers of the impacted accounts, are reaching potentially millions of users.
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The incident obviously opens up a range of concerns, and while we’ll need to wait for a report on how the hacks have occurred, it’s a significant issue, which will undoubtedly see Twitter come under intense scrutiny.
That’s especially relevant given the way US President Donald Trump has used tweets to communicate foreign policy. Thus far, Trump’s account has remained untouched, but it almost seems inevitable that it too will be caught up.
We’ll keep updating this story as more information comes to hand. Â
Follow Andrew Hutchinson on Twitter
Source Social Media Today
