Major Twitter hack for Bitcoin decimates celebrity accounts

Twitter has just suffered what is undoubtedly the worst hacking incident in its history. According to what is known, attackers managed to hijack an unknown number of accounts — many of which belonged to major celebrities — in an attempt to scam people out of their Bitcoins.

What happened?

The attack took place yesterday evening, and was quickly reported by Twitter Support, which tweeted that the company is aware of a security incident impacting accounts on Twitter.

The attackers mostly targeted major verified accounts, but pretty much anyone with a large number of followers could have been hit.

Among the most notable verified Twitter users who were targeted are Tesla and SpaceX CEO, Elon Musk, the former US President, Barack Obama, Kim Kardashian, Kanye West, Warren Buffett, Jeff Bezos, Joe Biden, and even accounts of major firms like Apple.

The attack was massive, and as soon as the attackers hijacked the accounts, they posted tweets on behalf of their owners.

What did the attackers want?

While Twitter has since put the affected accounts under lockdown, and has deleted the tweets posted by the attackers, many have taken screenshots of these tweets.

From the hackers' messages, it is rather clear that they wanted to trick people into sending them their Bitcoins.

One Twitter user took a screenshot of a message posted by Elon Musk's stolen account, which says: "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." This message was followed by a wallet address belonging to the hackers.

 Similar messages with slight variations were posted by other stolen accounts. For example, Uber's corporate account posted a 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."

Soon after that, Uber posted its own warning about the hack, stating that the tweet was posted by a scammer, and that it was deleted in the meantime.

From what is known, attackers' wallet received over $115,000 in BTC during the first two hours.