High-Profile Twitter Accounts Including Obama, Biden Targeted in Bitcoin Scam
Several high-profile Twitter accounts, including those of Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden and former president Barack Obama appeared to be hacked simultaneously on Wednesday with a message soliciting participation in a Bitcoin scam.
The hacking effort also targeted Tesla CEO Elon Musk, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, Microsoft founder Bill Gates, former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Kanye West, Warren Buffett, and the corporate accounts of Uber and Apple.
A tweet from Musk read, “Feeling greatful, doubling all payments sent to my BTC address! You send $1,000, I send back $2,000! Only doing this for the next 30 minutes.”
Many of the tweets included a link to a Bitcoin wallet address. Close to 300 people reportedly fell for the scam and contributed more than $100,000 to the fake wallet.
Biden and Obama’s accounts posted a similar message, promising to double the money of participants who contributed to the Bitcoin wallet over the following 30 minutes.
Uber posted a similar tweet that said, “Due to Covid-19, we are giving back over $10,000,000 in Bitcoin! All payments sent to our address below will be sent back doubled.”
The ride-hailing company confirmed in a subsequent tweet that its account had been hacked.
“Like many others, our @Uber account was hit by a scammer today. The tweet has been deleted and we’re working directly with @Twitter to figure out what happened,” Uber said.
Hours after the first tweets appeared, Twitter said at 5:45 p.m. EST that the social media company is aware of the breach and is working on resolving it.
“We are aware of a security incident impacting accounts on Twitter. We are investigating and taking steps to fix it. We will update everyone shortly,” Twitter Support wrote in a tweet.
