Yesterday, hackers gained access to over a dozen high-profile accounts on Twitter as part of a bitcoin scam campaign. The accounts of politicians such as Joe Biden and former President Brack Obama, tech billionaires such as Elon Musk, Bill Gates, and Jeff Bezos, and corporate accounts like that of Apple were compromised in the cyberattack. Following this troubling incident, Twitter shares were down more than 5% in Thursday’s premarket. The hacked accounts displayed a tweet instructing viewers to send bitcoin to a specific address.
Elon Musk, Tesla CEO, was the first victim on Wednesday when a tweet was posted through his account promising to double any payments sent to a bitcoin address. Later on Wednesday, Twitter released a statement that explained threat actors targeted Twitter employees to gain access to internal systems and tools, later compromising several high-profile accounts. Twitter claims their investigation found the attacks were a coordinated social engineering effort that was successful among some Twitter employees, allowing the cybercriminals access to internal systems and tools.