Elon Musk, Apple, Bill Gates And Other Popular Twitter Accounts Hacked In Bitcoin Scam

Several Twitter accounts of household names were hacked to spread a cryptocurrency scam on Wednesday.

Elon Musk, Apple, and Joe Biden are just a few names among the victims. What hackers did was to promote a bitcoin wallet with a claim any amount sent to it would be doubled and sent back.

A few hours later, Twitter accounts of Jeff Bezos, Wiz Khalifa, YouTuber MrBeast, CashApp, Mike Bloomberg, Kim Kardashian West, Warren Buffett, Barack Obama, Uber, Bill Gates, and Wendy’s also posted the same message.

So far, the true scope of the hack has not been identified. Initial reports claim the hackers targeted cryptocurrency-focused celebrities. @binance, @coindesk, @bitcoin, and @coinbase were also hacked to promote a similar scamming message with a link to a website, which has been pulled offline.

According to Kristaps Ronka, chief executive of the domain registrar hackers used for the scam, the company suspended the domain as soon as it received reports of the hack.

As the situation develops, several other bitcoin wallet addresses were shared by the hacked accounts, posing a challenge to the effort to track them.

Twitter made its official announcement about the hack at 2:45 p.m. PT Wednesday afternoon, calling the hack a security incident.

It seems like owners of some accounts got their control back as the scamming posts were deleted. Right after the cryptocurrency message was removed, Elon Musk's account tweeted ‘hi,’ which soon disappeared.

As Twitter tries to address the issue, many verified accounts were unable to tweet as the company restricted the posting functionality and the ability to reset passwords.

By Wednesday evening, Twitter said users should be able to tweet as usual but some functionalities may come and go as the company working to address the problem.

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