Twitter meltdown as Global figures hacked in Bitcoin scam

Billionaires Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates are among many prominent US figures targeted by hackers on Twitter in a scam to receive Bitcoin payments that has supposedly netted hundreds of thousands of dollars for the assailants.

The official accounts of Barack Obama, Joe Biden and Kanye West also requested donations in the cryptocurrency.

“Everyone is asking me to give back. You send $1,000, I send you back $2,000.”

Twitter said it was a “co-ordinated” attack targeting its employees “with access to internal systems and tools”.

“We know they [the hackers] used this access to take control of many highly-visible (including verified) accounts and Tweet on their behalf.”

It added that “significant steps” were taken to limit access to such internal systems and tools while the company’s investigation was ongoing.

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Embattled CEO Jack Dorsey tweeted: “Tough day for us at Twitter. We all feel terrible this happened.”

Dmitri Alperovitch, who co-founded cyber-security company CrowdStrike, told Reuters news agency: “This appears to be the worst hack of a major social media platform yet.”

Those targeted included:

• the rapper Kanye West
• reality TV star Kim Kardashian West
• former US President Obama
• former US Vice-President Joe Biden, who is the current Democratic presidential candidate
• media billionaire Mike Bloomberg
• the ride-sharing app Uber
• the iPhone-maker Apple

The Biden campaign said Twitter had “locked down the account within a few minutes of the breach and removed the related tweet”.

A spokesman for Bill Gates said: “This appears to be part of a larger issue that Twitter is facing.”