Twitter hack hits Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Barack Obama and more in Bitcoin scam

Social networking giant Twitter reported a major breach with accounts of several popular people getting hacked. The hacked account sent messages urging followers to fork up cryptocurrency. 

The accounts hacked involved those belonging to Jeff Bezos, Barack Obama, Waren Buffet, Joe Biden, Bill Gates, Elon Musk, Kanye West, Mike Bloomberg and more. The accounts for Uber and Apple were also affected during the major rupture. The fake tweets even offered to send $2,000 for every $1,000 sent to a bitcoin address.

Some of the bogus tweets were summarily deleted but there seemed to be a struggle to regain control of the accounts. In the case of billionaire Telsa Chief Executive Elon Musk, for instance, one tweet asking cryptocurrency was removed and, sometime later, another one displayed.

A fake tweet from Bill Gates' handle read, "Everyone is asking me to give back, and now is the time. I am doubling all payments sent to my BTC address for the next 30 minutes. You send $1,000, I send you back $2,000. Only going on for 30 minutes! Enjoy!"

Also, a fake tweet from Tesla CEO Elon Musk's account says, "Everyone is asking me to give back, and now is the time. I am doubling all payments sent to my BTC address for the next 30 minutes. You send $1,000, I send you back $2,000. Only going on for 30 minutes! Enjoy!"

The scam came into light when fake tweets went viral, offering $2,000 for every $1,000 sent to a Bitcoin address through these high-profile accounts. Later, the Bitcoin scam tweets were deleted from the accounts of Bill Gates and Elon Musk and then tweeted again. Twitter Support announced, "We are aware of a security incident impacting accounts on Twitter. We are investigating and taking steps to fix it. We will update everyone shortly."

In a statement, Twitter stated, "We are aware of a security incident impacting accounts on Twitter. We are investigating and taking steps to fix it. We will update everyone shortly". Reacting on the same said, it said, "You may be unable to Tweet or reset your password while we review and address this incident.”

Meanwhile, Justin Sun, Tron founder and CEO of BitTorrent put a price of $1 million on the heads of those accountable for the hacking incident.