Twitter accounts hacked in Bitcoin scam: All you need to know

On Wednesday, July 15, in an unexpected turn of events, the Twitter accounts of several famous people were hacked and fallen prey to the crypto-currency scam. The Twitter accounts of Bill Gates, Elon Musk, Barack Obama, Jeff Bezos, Joe Biden, Kim Kardashian West, Warren Buffet along with others were compromised.

The hackers took over these accounts and posted tweets that mentioned a certain bitcoin wallet address along with a promise of sending back double the amount of what was being sent to the person in question. The scam happened in two rounds, wherein the scammers posted similar Bitcoin-scamming tweets for the second time from both Gates’ and Musk’s accounts after their first tweets were deleted.

Meanwhile, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey issued a statement calling it a 'tough day'. After the accounts were restored almost after two hours, Dorsey said that everyone at Twitter feels 'terrible' about the incident. On the other hand, in an unprecedented move, Twitter blocked the verified handles from posting anything as of now, as it launches an investigation. The company notified that the users would be unable to send any tweets from their verified handle as it had blocked the user login and reset passwords rights.

Most accounts should be able to Tweet again. As we continue working on a fix, this functionality may come and go. We're working to get things back to normal as quickly as possible.

— Twitter Support (@TwitterSupport) July 16, 2020

Even though scams such as these are fairly common in the world plagued by technology, what has come as a surprise is the fact that these hackers could so easily get access to high profile Twitter accounts such as Bill Gate’s account or Elon Musk’s. This security breach has proven to be a massive breach in the already dampening security crisis with regards to data mining across the world. As we are still unaware of how this breach happened or to what extend was the security of Twitter compromised, this still remains a question of contention as the breach has given birth to major optics challenges for Twitter.