Bitcoin Scam: Twitter Accounts of Obama, Bill Gates, Other US Prominent Leaders Hacked

In an apparent effort to promote bitcoin scam, the Twitter accounts of some of the US most prominent political and business leaders, which includes former President Barack Obama and Joe Biden, Bill Gates and Warren Buffett, were hacked Wednesday afternoon.

Bloomberg reported that the attacks were coordinated with the likes of Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Kanye West, Uber Technologies Inc., Apple Inc., and Michael Bloomberg, the founder and majority owner of Bloomberg News parent Bloomberg LP having their account hacked as well.

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According to reports, the accounts sent out tweets promising to double the money of anyone sending funds via Bitcoin within 30 minutes.

Barrack Obama
Barrack Obama

Twitter reacts to hacking incidents

Meanwhile, Twitter has reacted to the development, saying it is aware of it and an investigation is ongoing over it.

“You may be unable to Tweet or reset your password while we review and address this incident,” Twitter wrote on its support account. The company’s shares declined more than 3% in extended trading.

https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
So far, the Bitcoin address tweeted by the hackers has received over 12 Bitcoins, worth more than $110,000. As part of the move to stop the scam, popular Bitcoin exchange Coinbase blocked its users from sending money to the address.

How they were able to penetrate into Twitter accounts were stunning, after the users targeted had used two-factor authentication and strong passwords. The tweets show that they were posted using Twitter’s web application.

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TrendsMap reports that the phrase “I am giving back to my community due to COVID-19” has been tweeted 3,330 times in the past four hours.

A heat map shows activity centered in Houston but scattered across the globe, including tweets originating from IP addresses in New York, London, Spain, Italy, Jakarta, and Tokyo.

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