Pay one Bitcoin and get two back: That sounds dubious. But if the request appears on the Twitter accounts of celebrities like Barack Obama, Jeff Bezos or Elon Musk, this message sounds much more serious. The hacker's stitches.
Unknowns succeeded in spreading advertising for dubious cryptocurrency deals on Twitter profiles of celebrities such as ex-President Barack Obama, presidential candidate Joe Biden and Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos on Wednesday. Accounts of companies like Apple and Uber were also affected. How exactly the unprecedented hack could happen was initially unclear. Many of the Twitter accounts were temporarily blocked and were back online a short time later without the obviously fraudulent messages.
Twitter profiles of former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, rapper Kanye West, Microsoft founder Bill Gates and Tesla boss Elon Musk were also affected. In the message distributed via the accounts, it was promised to repay the bitcoins that were sent in twice.
Twitter popular with hackers
Twitter has had problems hijacking accounts in the past – but never on such a broad front and with so many prominent names at once. The extent of the attack suggests that this time it was not an app linked to Twitter accounts that was used, as in previous cases, but that systems from Twitter could be directly affected. The short message service said it was investigating the incident. In the near future, users could have problems setting tweets or changing their password, the company warned.
The celebrity accounts are likely to be protected with complex passwords and so-called two-factor authentication, which also requires a freshly sent code to log on to a new device. The fact that it was still possible to send messages on behalf of the celebrities raises serious questions about Twitter's security measures – especially less than four months before the US presidential election. The account of US President Donald Trump, for whom Twitter is a central communication channel, was not affected on Wednesday.
Cryptocurrency worth over $ 100,000 was quickly sent to a Bitcoin account mentioned in the Twitter news.
Twitter had further tightened security after strangers spread news about CEO Jack Dorsey's account almost a year ago. The service said at the time that its systems had not been hacked, but a security vulnerability at Dorsey's mobile operator had allowed the tweets to be sent via SMS. Most recently, a group called "OurMine" managed to post to the accounts of several American football teams at the end of January. The aim was to show that "everything can be hacked," it said at the time.
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