The Twitter accounts of many celebrities, tech-moguls, businessmen, and politicians were hacked on 15 July in what appeared to be a bizarre Bitcoin scam. As reported by Maxim , the corporate accounts of Uber and Apple were also compromised along with that of former President Barack Obama and former Vice-President Joe Biden. The hackers left a simple message with each of the hacked handles saying: "I am giving back to my community due to Covid-19! (...) All bitcoin sent to my address below will be sent back doubled. If you send $1,000, I will send back $2,000!" This message was followed by a Bitcoin link that enabled the transfers to take place.
Kanye West's handle was hacked twice and it read: "I am giving back to my community due to Covid-19! All Bitcoin sent to my address below will be sent back doubled. If you send $1,000, I will send back $2,000!"
“Only doing this for the next 30 minutes! Enjoy."
According to Business Insider , the hackers were able to con people off over $100,000 before Twitter could get things under control. Jack Dorsey, the CEO of Twitter tweeted about the incident saying: "Tough day for us at Twitter. We all feel terrible this happened." He added: "We're diagnosing and will share everything we can when we have a more complete understanding of exactly what happened."
https://twitter.com/TwitterSupport/status/1283518038445223936
https://twitter.com/MalwareTechBlog/status/1283496375167025152
The primary analysis of the event indicated that the hackers also accessed the accounts of other influential handles including Kim Kardashian West, and a Twitter avatar named @TheTweetOfGod