This afternoon, several of Twitter’s biggest names and accounts appear to have been compromised in order to push a bitcoin scam. Tweets from the accounts of Elon Musk, Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, Apple, and potentially others were sent out within minutes of each other. Each message looks to entice followers to send Bitcoin to a listed account in the hopes of receiving double the amount in return.
The wording appears to be slightly different from account to account, but they each contain the same basic request for Bitcoin from followers in exchange for money. The actual Bitcoin wallet address seems to be different in some of the messages, but BuzzFeed’s Ryan Mac discovered at least one is an actual wallet with recent transactions occurring.
This story is still developing — in fact, more affected accounts (Joe Biden, Barack Obama) have surface during the course of writing this post, but we’ll keep an eye on the situation. In the mean time, while the specifics of how the hack occurred remain unclear, it serves as a good reminder of the importance of robust and consistent account protections. And that goes for companies and organizations; not just individual users. As we learn more about the scope and scale of this issue, it’s becoming increasingly likely this goes well beyond users enabling two-factor authentication.
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