Hackers take over Twitter accounts of Gates, Musk, Biden, Obama, Apple and others in crypto scam

Bill Gates, Elon Musk, and Jeff Bezos had their Twitter accounts hacked Wednesday afternoon in an apparent cryptocurrency giveaway scam. Other accounts including Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Apple, Uber, and Square’s CashApp were also hacked. Here’s the first statement from Twitter:

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 (@TwitterSupport) July 15, 2020

The tweet below was posted from Gates’ account at 1:34 pm, but was then deleted. The same tweet from Gates appeared at 1:48 pm.

A tweet from Musk was sent out just before 1:30 p.m. PT and was also deleted, before another appeared at 1:50 p.m. PT. Another similar tweet appeared at 2:19 p.m. PT.

Looks like Elon may have been hacked pic.twitter.com/H3SbSU8NJI

— Mathew Ingram (@mathewi) July 15, 2020

Biden, Obama, and Bezos were also hacked:

Here are the tweets from Apple and Uber’s accounts:

Uber responded with this:

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 Comms (@Uber_Comms) July 15, 2020

More than $15,000,000 had been funneled to the bitcoin address included in the tweets.

Twitter stock was down more than 3% in after-hours trading.

Here is more commentary from others:

UPDATE: @elonmusk, @CashApp and @Ripple also appear to be compromised, among other prominent accounts. CoinDesk has reached out to Twitter for comment. https://t.co/l0q5PwuJ32

— CoinDesk (@CoinDesk) July 15, 2020

ALL MAJOR CRYPTO TWITTER ACCOUNTS HAVE BEEN COMPROMISED.

2FA / strong password was used for @Gemini account. We are investigating and hope to have more information shortly. https://t.co/X3C0uJzc6C

— Cameron Winklevoss (@cameron) July 15, 2020

Many great security recommendations floating around after the big #twitterhack. But this was an inside job. Great passwords and 2FA wouldn't help in this case.

— Aaron Pressman (@ampressman) July 15, 2020

AllNaijaEntertainment noted that Musk has been targeted by bitcoin scammers in the past.

Story is developing…

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