Twitter under attack

Twitter is suffering a major disruption, and has disabled all verified accounts in what’s quickly becoming its biggest crisis to date.

The Twitter accounts of Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos were among those apparently hacked. Picture: AFP

Twitter has disabled all ‘verified’ accounts, after the official Twitter accounts of Apple, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and otherswere hijacked by scammers trying to dupe people into sending cryptocurrency bitcoin, in a massive hack of the social media platform.

The list of accounts commandeered simultaneously grew rapidly to include Joe Biden, Barack Obama, Uber, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, bitcoin specialty firms and many others.

Posts, which were largely deleted, were fired off from the array of high-profile accounts telling people they had 30 minutes to send $US1000 in bitcoin in order to be sent back twice as much.

“This is a SCAM, DO NOT participate!” Gemini cryptocurrency exchange co-founder Cameron Winklevoss warned in a tweet from his official account at Twitter.

“This is the same attack/takeover that other major crypto twitter accounts are experiencing. Be vigilant!”

More than $150,000 has already been sent to the crypto scammers, according to a live feed of the scammers’ apparent crypto wallet.

Twitter said it was looking into the situation and would provide a statement.

You may be unable to Tweet or reset your password while we review and address this incident.

— Twitter Support (@TwitterSupport) July 15, 2020

Twitter is currently blocking all verified accounts from tweeting following multiple accounts being hacked. pic.twitter.com/1ufwh0agdT

— Pop Base (@PopBase) July 15, 2020

Statement from FBI's San Francisco bureau about today's Twitter hack. pic.twitter.com/u1F4soRh57

— Ben Collins (@BenCollinsNBC) July 15, 2020

“Given the accounts that got hacked more recently (Apple, Uber, Gates, Musk, etc), I am now leaning towards this being an internal compromise of a Twitter system, not an API attack from a social aggregator service,” bitcoin authority and author Andreas Antonopoulos said in a tweet from his @aantonop account.

Website 9to5 Mac is carrying a tweet from Apple’s official twitter account urging followers to support Bitcoin. It offered an account for sending Bitcoins to, with the warning” only going on for the next 30 minutes”.

The new removed tweet from Apple's official website urging users donate Bitcoins for double the return. Source: 9to5 Mac.

The post was deleted after five minutes, yet by then it had been retweeted 1,102 times and liked 1,165 times. The number of people who took up the scam is unknown, but it is the apparently first-ever Tweet from Apple’s official website.

The likelihood of compromised accounts being used for soliciting Bitcoins means it is extremely important that affected Twitter users change their passwords. Australian accounts are among those impacted. Some verified Twitter users at The Australian cannot send tweets because of the hack.

A version of the scam invited people to click on a link at which they would be exploited.

“All major crypto Twitter accounts have been compromised,” Mr Winklevoss warned in a tweet.

Among the hacked accounts was @gemini used by the crypto-exchange, according to his twin brother and co-founder Tyler Winklevoss.

“@Gemini’s twitter account, along with a number of other crypto twitter accounts, has been hacked,” Tyler Winklevoss said in a tweet.

Bezos, Gates and Musk are among the 10 richest people in the world, with tens of millions of followers on Twitter.

Additional reporting: AFP