Major Twitter attack hits US politicians, celebrities and companies as part of a bitcoin scam

Steffy Bogdanova
July 17, 2020 2:33 pm

Dozens of high-profile social media accounts of US politicians, celebrities and companies suffered a hack on Wednesday in a bitcoin scam.

Among the affected accounts were those of former US President Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Elon Musk, Bill Gates, Apple and Uber. Crypto exchanges Coinbase, Gemini, Binance and their executives were also affected by the hack. The hackers used their twitter accounts to post a bitcoin scam links.

The post on Barack Obama’s Twitter account stated:

I am giving back to my community due to Covid-19!

All Bitcoin sent to my address bellow will be sent back doubled. If you send $1,000, I will send back $2,000!

Twitter’s share price took a hit in response to the events and FBI announced launching a full investigation in the scam.

The hack potentially affected thousands of people and generated approximately $118,000 (13 bitcoins). Twitter stated that coordinated attack and the perpetrators targeted their employees “with access to internal systems and tools”.

Major Twitter hack hits US politicians, celebrities and companies as part of a bitcoin scam

CEO Jack Dorsey tweeted on Wednesday:

Tough day for us at Twitter. We all feel terrible this happened. We’re diagnosing and will share everything we can when we have a more complete understanding of exactly what happened.

Twitter took steps to verify accounts and blocked users from tweeting bitcoin wallet addresses temporarily.

CryptoForHealth.com website was associated with some of the Twitter account hacks. The domain was registered the same day as the attacks and was connected to the email address [email protected] and the name ‘Anthony Elias’. The website has been flagged as phishing site and taken offline.

Cryptoforhealth was also found as an Instagram profile with a description “It was us.”, followed by a smiley emoticon. The profile picture of the account has the name Crypto Knight.

The account had a message posted on Instagram saying:

It was a charity attack. Your money will find its way to the right place.

LeapRate Analyst

Experienced writer and journalist, working in the global online trading sector, Steffy is the Editor of LeapRate. She has previous experience as a copywriter and has been with the company since January 2020. Steffy has a British and American Studies degree from St. Kliment Ochridski University in Sofia.
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