Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and others hacked in crypto scam on Twitter
On Wednesday 15 July, Elon Musk’s Twitter account was reportedly compromised by a hacker — or a group of hackers — behind the bitcoin scam. Reports also indicate that Microsoft founder Bill Gates was victim to a similar attack.
Twitter Scam: Here’s what happened
The hackers tweeted from the billionaires’ accounts that they “are giving back to the community” and claimed that a “bitcoin sent to our address will be sent back to you doubled.” The first tweets were sent out at approximately 21:00 SAST.
While all the tweets shared across mulitple different account differed in wording, the Bitcoin Wallet address was the same. Most of the tweets have since been deleted, however, we’ll include the screenshots further down.
Verge reports that shortly after the initial wave of tweets from Musk and Gates, “the accounts of Apple, Uber, Jeff Bezos, Joe Biden, Kanye West, and former New York City mayor and billionaire Mike Bloomberg” were also compromised. Nick Statt explains:
“It’s unclear how widespread the operation is, but it appears to be affecting major companies and extremely high-profile individuals, suggesting that someone has either found a severe security loophole in Twitter’s login process or has gained access to a Twitter employee’s admin privileges”.
The hackers appeared to have received a total of $110 000 (R1.8 million). Due to the nature of the scam, with bitcoin being sent back and forth between accounts, the final balance continues to fluctuate. Blockchain-based cryptocurrency transactions are public.
2FA and strong passowrds of no use
The co-founder and CEO Gemini, Tyler Winklevoss, confirmed that Gemini’s twitter account, “along with a number of other crypto Twitter accounts, has been hacked”. He added:
“This has resulted in Gemini, Coinbase, Binance, and Coindesk tweeting about a scam partnership with CryptoForHealth. DO NOT CLICK THE LINK! These tweets are SCAMS.”
Accoding to Winklevoss, Gemini had 2FA (Two-factor authentication) enabled for @Gemini, but the security measures were not enough to weather the storm. He said his team is “currently investigating root cause”.
Most of the other accounts confirmed that 2FA was in place, along with strong passwords. However, eagle-eyed fans noted that the scam tweets were posted using Twitter’s web app.
Twitter says it is investigating the issue.
This is developing story. We will provide additional updates when information becomes available.