Security News > 2020 > July > Twitter mass hacking: Bill Gates, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Mike Bloomberg, Biden, Obama, more hijacked to peddle Bitcoin scam

The Twitter accounts of Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, Tesla CEO Elon Musk, and other celebrities were briefly taken over on Wednesday, along with the accounts of various cryptocurrency businesses and affiliated executives, to promote a Bitcoin scam.

Twitter also silenced verified blue-tick accounts temporarily to prevent more abuse while it got to the bottom of the kerfuffle.

Twitter said in an email to The Register that it is looking into the situation and plans to issue a statement when it knows more.

Leaked yet unconfirmed screenshots are now circulating among infosec bods of an internal Twitter account control panel that may have been abused, by a rogue insider or outside miscreant, to change the registered email address of profiles so that they could be hijacked.

Twitter said tonight miscreants gained access to its internal control panels by social-engineering staff, leading to the account takeovers.

News URL

https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2020/07/15/mass_twitter_account_hacking_bitcoin/