A Twitter hack compromised the accounts of “verified” celebrities and politicians, including Bill Gates, Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Kanye West, Kim Kardashian, Warren Buffett, Jeff Bezos, Mike Bloomberg, and Elon Musk.
Once the accounts were accessed, they went phishing for cryptocurrency.
For example, Bill Gates’ account Tweeted, quote, “Everyone is asking me to give back, and now is the time. I am doubling all payments sent to my Bitcoin address for the next 30 minutes. You send $1,000, I send you back $2,000.”
They posted the link, and said, quote, “Only going on for 30 minutes! Enjoy!”
Obviously, stuff like this SHOULD trigger your B.S. detector . . . but a lot of people fell for it, possibly because they trusted that it was coming from the verified accounts of famous people.
It’s unclear how much money the hackers got, but it was probably worth it . . .
At one point, one of the fake Bitcoin wallets had received more than $100,000 in Bitcoins through hundreds of transactions. But it sounds like there were MULTIPLE fake wallets, and they were quickly shuffling the money to other accounts.
Twitter apologized for the breach, and temporarily suspended “verified” Twitter accounts . . . since those were the ones that were targeted. Most of those accounts have since been restored.
There’s no word who’s behind the hack, but the FBI is looking into it.
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