On Late Wednesday night the Twitter accounts of some of the big voices including Bill Gates, Elon Musk, Warren Buffet, Barack Obama, Jeff Bezos, Michael Bloomberg, Wiz khalifa were hacked and found preying for a crypto-related scam.
The scam tweets that were posted on the Twitter account of the Bill Gates and Elon Musk stated a Bitcoin wallet address and a promise of giving twice the amount. After the Bitcoin scam tweets of the scammers were deleted the scammers posted it again.
The scam message posted from Musk’s profile was more obvious to being detected as fake. It said, “You know I living giving back to my community. I’m doubling all BTC payments sent to my address. You send $1,000 and I will send #$2,000 back! Tell your family & friends! Only going on for 30 minutes. (sic)
the scam tweet posted
While these type of scams are very common, but this scam is limited to more than two accounts it was wider spread and according to the reports the Scammers Bitcoin account has got 160 incoming transactions and the amount collected was over $120,000in Bitcoin already.
Twitter said that they have started investigation for the incident.
How Twitter was hacked
People are asking whether the Twitter was hacked in the Last night or the accounts of the big profiles were compromised or its a kind of vulnerability that was exploited.
According, to the reports shared by Twitter that it was a social engineering attack on some of the employees of Twitter with access to the internal systems and tools.
However, it was not clear that who was behind the attack or the attackers have direct access to the direct send message sent on the affected accounts without asking for the password verification.
How the Twitter Hack Started
Initially, the scam has appeared to be against the cryptocurrency-focused accounts such as Bitcoin, CoinDesk, Binance, Gemini, Coinbase, all of them were hacked with the same message quoted below.
We have partnered with CryptoForHealth and are giving back 5000 BTC to the community followed by a link to a phishing website that has since been taken down.
After this tweets from Apple, Uber, Mike Bloomberg, and Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk accounts were posted with the same Bitcoin address.
Although the tweets were deleted and Twitter had temporarily stopped messaging from the verified tweeting accounts.
Security researchers also found that hackers have also changed the email address of the compromised accounts through which they are having difficulty in recovering the account.
Users are recommended not to fall for these scams.
Before the Twitter Hack Story
According to our reports from the cybersecurity researchers there is a hacker name Krik who was behind the massive Twitter hacking. At first he tried to sell the vanity name accounts(famous people accounts) in exchange for the Bitcoin.
Somehow the hacker was able to get access to the admin tool of the Twitter from where he was able to post the information and modify the information such as email address change and can even suspend the account.
The hacker was selling the Twitter accounts of big profiles on the hacking forum named “OGUSERS” with the profile name Krik.
Also the Tron founder Justin Sun has put a bounty for catching the Twitter hacker.
Tron’s founder said that he will give $1 million to the person who will be responsible for tracking down the hackers and providing the data regarding the hacking.
We are closely working with Twitter to resolve these issues immediately and return the accounts back to the normal. We are always vigilant in the handling our accounts; operating safely and responsibly, taking the security to the highest standards possible
Sun added
The hackers are now using the new bitcoin wallet address that is bc1qwr30ddc04zqp878c0evdrqfx564mmf0dy2w39
Update: Ogusers has denied the fact behind the twitter
