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Highly Coordinated Attack Impacts Verified Twitter Accounts of the World’s Most Famous People and Companies

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Several verified Twitter accounts of famous people and companies were taken over in a security breach, including Apple, Elon Musk, Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, Barack Obama and others. Hackers then published tweets from these accounts soliciting donations via Bitcoin. Editorial credit: Budrul Chukrut / Shutterstock.com.

WEST PALM BEACH, FL – On July 15, 2020, several verified Twitter accounts of famous people and companies were taken over in a security breach, including Apple, Elon Musk, Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, Barack Obama and others. Hackers then published tweets from these accounts soliciting donations via Bitcoin.

For example, one tweet read:

“We are giving back to our community. We support Bitcoin and we believe you should too. All Bitcoin sent to our address below will be sent back to you doubled.”

Within the first three hours of the attack, people were deceived into sending more than $118,000 to the scammers. Bitcoin is a popular cryptocurrency used by scammers because it is virtually impossible to recover the lost funds.

Twitter has stated that verified accounts will be unable to tweet until the issue is resolved and have also disabled some account features such as password reset requests.

Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey tweeted that “we all feel terrible this happened,” with a promise of a detailed explanation in the future.

John Colascione

John Colascione is the Chief Executive Officer of SEARCHEN NETWORKS®, a group of digital media companies based in West Palm Beach, FL. He specializes in Website Monetization, is a Google AdWords Certified Professional and authored an educational ‘how to’ book called ”Mastering Your Website. He writes primarily on Internet businesses and related issues while covering other items of interest including breaking news and politics if and when time allows.

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