Hackers Reportedly Earn 120,000$ From Hacking Major Twitter Accounts

Yesterday, dozen of Twitter accounts of many billionaires as well as famous politicians were hacked and it seems that has given scammers a considerable amount of money. Initial statistics show that about $ 120,000 worth of bitcoin was transferred to these scammers.

Previously, hackers had hijacked the Twitter accounts of a number of famous figures and companies around the world, including Kanye West, Barack Obama, Jeff Bezos, Joe Biden, Bill Gates, Michael Bloomberg, Elon Musk, Uber, Apple, and several big cryptocurrency exchanges.

The hacked accounts posted tweets saying they would double the amount for anyone who sent them money via the bitcoin wallet address. Of course, after the victims have transferred the money to them, no money will be returned to them.

However, records on the blockchain chain show that hundreds of people took the bait when they were posted by famous people - the bitcoin wallet address posted with the tweet received over 350 deposit transactions in just a few hours. Business Insider has identified at least three bitcoin wallets mentioned in the hacked accounts, but it is unclear if these are the only accounts that receive the money.

Besides, not every money transfer to these bitcoin wallets is the result of the recent Twitter scam. Hackers also often intentionally transfer money to these crypto wallets before committing scams to make them appear more valid, so the amount of money in the wallet may be larger than the amount that the scam brought to them.

Because of the anonymous nature of cryptocurrencies, it's hard to determine how much money hackers have finally made from the recent phishing attack.

Shortly after the incident, one of the moves taken by Twitter to limit the consequences of the fraud was to suspend the tweeting of "verified accounts". This means that many verified accounts were affected, including some critical government and emergency services.