In one of the biggest mass cyber attacks of our time, the Twitter accounts of major companies and individuals were hacked, and that too to promote a bitcoin scam.
While the actual extent of the hack is unknown, the accounts of former US President Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Elon Musk, Bill Gates, Kanye West, Michael Bloomberg, and Apple are known to have been compromised.
In response to this, Twitter blocked new tweets from every verified user, as well as locked all the compromised accounts
We have locked accounts that were compromised and will restore access to the original account owner only when we are certain we can do so securely.
— Twitter Support (@TwitterSupport) July 16, 2020
You may be unable to Tweet or reset your password while we review and address this incident.
— Twitter Support (@TwitterSupport) July 15, 2020
Even CEO Jack Dorsey tweeted about it being a tough day at the office for everyone involved.
Tough day for us at Twitter. We all feel terrible this happened.
— jack (@jack) July 16, 2020
We’re diagnosing and will share everything we can when we have a more complete understanding of exactly what happened.
💙 to our teammates working hard to make this right.
Meanwhile, the rest of Twitter, as it happens, has a lot of jokes to share.
Nowadays twitter privacy 🤢🤢😂😂#Hacked #Hackers pic.twitter.com/il3V7Hmej3
— Doland_chacha_America_wale (@dolandwale) July 16, 2020
#Hacked
— Billu💙 (@sarcasmic_billu) July 16, 2020
hackers to the celebrities :- you never had any account pic.twitter.com/UBBEr8vnXt
All of Unverififed twitter right now #Hacked #Bluechecks pic.twitter.com/tjSsh5b2S4
— lil opp (@youngboysavage) July 15, 2020
So you saw Jeff Bezos tweet THIS and you didn’t think something was fishy?? #hacked pic.twitter.com/NFBT1dEKi9
— Ralph (@RalphTheWiseguy) July 15, 2020
Twitter security be like:
— Dale 🦥 (@4PFDale) July 15, 2020
#hacked pic.twitter.com/i3APnPC200
Me seeing people actually send money to the hackers through bitcoin: #hacked pic.twitter.com/7KRmWxzowL
— Gordon Ramsay Burner (@RamsayBurner) July 15, 2020
Oh no Trump’s account got #hacked too! What’s that? He actually tweeted that stupid shit? Oh. Never mind! False alarm.
— JeremyNewberger (@jeremynewberger) July 15, 2020
According to The Verge, the hacker has already collected $120,000. Although it seems as if they are sending money back out as the daily final balance has fluctuated up and down.
It’s an actual wallet address and there are transactions happening. It’s unclear if these transactions are legit. Scammers often seed their own scams to give them the appearance of authenticity. https://t.co/GUHEDaKNxu pic.twitter.com/xfhl3817xr
— Ryan Mac 🙃 (@RMac18) July 15, 2020
Twitter is yet to make it public how these many accounts got hacked at the same time. This also raises some serious questions about the security and privacy of our accounts.
