High-profile Twitter accounts hacked in Bitcoin scam

In what appears to be a worst-ever social media attack , a number of high profile Twitter accounts including that of Billionaires Elon Mask, Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates, former president Barack Obama have been hacked in a scam that promises big returns on the crypto currency Bitcoin . Twitter said late Wednesday all these prominent accounts displayed tweets telling followers to send bitcoin to a specific address.

Companies, including Apple and Uber, were apparently hacked as well. Following the incident, all of Apple’s tweets appeared to have been deleted.

Twitter said that once they noticed that the accounts was hacked , they locked down immediately all the verified account – the ones with blue tick – and removed the related tweet.

In a statement issued, Twitter confirmed about the issue and said that this was a coordinated social engineering attack on the company after scammers gained access to one of its tools. Twitter says the company’s shares declined 2.3% post market. They said they are looking into the matter more seriously following the breach and the investigation is going on.

“We’re continuing to limit the ability to Tweet, reset your password, and some other account functionalities while we look into this,” it tweeted.

Meanwhile, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey in response to the attack said that it was a tough day for all at Twitter.
“We all feel terrible this happened. We’re diagnosing and will share everything we can when we have a more complete understanding of exactly what happened,” Mr Dorsey tweeted.