MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Major hack and “take and run” scam with Twitter high-profile accounts

The list of accounts commandeered simultaneously grew rapidly to include Joe Biden, Barack Obama, Uber, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates

The official Twitter accounts of Apple, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and others were hijacked on Wednesday by scammers trying to dupe people into sending crypto-currency bitcoin, in a massive hack of the social media platform. The list of accounts commandeered simultaneously grew rapidly to include Joe Biden, Barack Obama, Uber, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, reality television show star Kim Kardashian and rapper Kanye West, among many others.

Posts, which were largely deleted, were fired off from the array of high-profile accounts telling people they had 30 minutes to send US$1,000 in bitcoin in order to be sent back twice as much.

“This is a SCAM, DO NOT participate!” Gemini cryptocurrency exchange co-founder Cameron Winklevoss warned in a tweet from his official account at Twitter. “This is the same attack/takeover that other major crypto twitter accounts are experiencing. Be vigilant!”

A version of the scam invited people to click on a link at which they would be exploited. “All major crypto Twitter accounts have been compromised,” Winklevoss warned in a tweet.

The cause of the breach was not immediately clear and - more than an hour after the first wave of hacks - Twitter took the extraordinary step of preventing at least some verified accounts from publishing messages altogether.

It was not clear whether all verified users were affected but, if so, it would have a huge impact on the platform and its users. Verified users include celebrities and journalists, but also governments, politicians and heads of state.

Twitter didn't offer clarification but said in a statement that users “may be unable to tweet or reset your password while we review and address this incident.”

The unusual scope of the problem suggested that it was not limited to a single account or service. While account compromises are not unusual, experts were surprised at the sheer scale and coordination of Wednesday's incident.

“This appears to be the worst hack of a major social media platform yet,” said Dmitri Alperovitch, who co-founded cybersecurity company CrowdStrike.

Earlier, some of the platform's biggest users appeared to be struggling to re-establish control of their Twitter accounts. In the case of billionaire Tesla's Musk, for example, one tweet soliciting cryptocurrency was removed and, sometime later, another one appeared, and then a third.

The corporate accounts for Uber and Apple were also affected as were some accounts of cryptocurrency-focused organizations.

Biden's campaign was “in touch” with Twitter. Accordingly the company had locked down the Democrat's account “immediately following the breach and removed the related tweet”. Tesla and other affected companies were not immediately available for comment.

Publicly available blockchain records show that the apparent scammers have already received more than US$100,000 worth of cryptocurrency. Some experts said the incident has raised questions about Twitter's cybersecurity.

“It's clear the company is not doing enough to protect itself,” said Oren Falkowitz, former CEO of Area 1 Security. Alperovitch, who now chairs the Silverado Policy Accelerator, said that, in a way, the public had dodged a bullet so far.