If you logged onto Twitter this morning and thought that some of the worlds most influential people were going to give you money, we’re sorry to inform you, but there’s been a hack you’ve just been scammed.
We spoke about this on today’s episode of It’s Been A Big Day For…
The Twitter accounts of major companies (like Apple and Uber) and influential pop culture figures (like Kanye West) have been compromised in a truly astonishing hack that promotes a Bitcoin scam.
This scam is still fresh, so we haven’t quite gotten down to the bottom of it yet. The hacks are ongoing and started this morning at around 6 AM AEST. Twitter acknowledged the situation on their platform and assured users that they were doing their best to try and fix it.
Twitter also snapped, taking unprecedented measures and prevented accounts from Tweeting at all whilst they tried to uncover the cause of the hack. This would mark the first time in Twitter’s existence that they’ve done such a thing.
The scam looks like this. A powerful person posts a “personalised” message saying they intend to give money to their fans/followers if you send them money first. But, the key is, they’ve all linked to the same bitcoin address.
It all started with Elon Musk’s Twitter account, then Bill Gates’ account and shortly after, the Twitter accounts of Apple, Uber, Barack Obama, Jeff Bezos, Joe Biden, Kanye West, Wiz Khalifa and others, were compromised and began promoting the scam in their own unique way.
Bill Gates was quick to delete his update, with a spokesperson for the Microsoft co-founder saying, “We can confirm that this tweet was not sent by Bill Gates. This appears to be part of a larger issue that Twitter is facing. Twitter is aware and working to restore the account.”
We’re not going to lie to you, we fell for Kanye’s. We’re unsure whether it has anything to do with his recent Presidential campaign or the nature of his followers, but for some reason, sending bitcoin to Kanye seemed on-brand for the hip hop mogul. But, any initial belief in this scam was quickly suppressed once we scrolled through our feed and saw Obama.
Most of these Tweets have since been deleted, but you can check out what they looked like here.
Given the hack has affected a large number of high-profile companies and individuals, we have to assume that the hackers have found a severe security loophole in Twitter’s login process.
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