Within minutes, an apparently coordinated hack began: A mass takeover of the most prominent names in crypto. Within hours, even Barack Obama’s account was compromised.
The messages pumped a bitcoin giveaway scam associated with an organization called “Crypto For Health.”
We detected what we believe to be a coordinated social engineering attack by people who successfully targeted some of our employees with access to internal systems and tools.
— Twitter Support (@TwitterSupport) July 16, 2020
First, they came for Binance’s account. Gemini was next. Then Coinbase. CoinDesk. Justin Sun. Charlie Lee. Bitcoin.org. Kucoin. Bitfinex. The Tron Foundation. Ripple.
Millions of collective followers began seeing the same, cloying message: “I am giving back to my fans. All Bitcoin sent to my address below will be sent back doubled.”
Growing list of accounts hacked (source):
- Benjamin Netanyahu
- Floyd Mayweather
- Kanye West
- Changpeng Zhao
- Charlie Lee
- Justin Sun
- Michael Bloomberg
- Jeff Bezos
- Warren Buffett
- Wiz Khalifa
- Bill Gates
- xxxtencion
- Kim Kardashian West
- MrBeast
Twitter said in a series of tweets that hackers targeted “some of” its employees who had access to internal tools, which they used “to take control of many highly-visible (including verified) accounts and Tweet on their behalf.”
About one hour in, the hack ditched its “Crypto For Health” tagline and went mainstream. Elon Musk’s account led the charge. Then Bill Gates. Then Elon Musk’s account came back for more. Kanye showed up an hour later. Jeff Bezos promised $50 million. Michael Bloomberg. Joe Biden. Barack Obama.
Elon Musk tweeted out:
“I’m feeling generous because of Covid-19. I’ll double any BTC payment sent to my BTC address for the next hour. Good luck, and stay safe out there!”
That post, like many of them, has since been deleted. (The hacker returned to Musk’s account for a second (and third) round, however.)
We have locked accounts that were compromised and will restore access to the original account owner only when we are certain we can do so securely.
— Twitter Support (@TwitterSupport) July 16, 2020
Source: Coindesk TwitterSupport