Twitter Data Breach (2020)

The Twitter accounts of several high-profile users, many of which were “verified” on the social network, have been hacked, with malicious actors posting messages that encouraged followers to send money to a certain Bitcoin address. The affected Twitter accounts include Bill Gates, Elon Musk, Coinbase, Coindesk, Jeff Bezos, Joe Bezos, Uber, and others. “Everyone is asking me to give back, and now is the time. I am doubling all payments sent to my BTC address for the next 30 minutes. You send $1,000, I send you back $2,000,” the fake message posted on Bill Gates’ Twitter account read. All messages posted by the cybercriminals behind the hack have already been removed, and Twitter even blocked the accounts from tweeting as an investigation started. As for how the hack was possible, Twitter says it discovered a coordinated social engineering attack that was aimed at its employees. Most of the targets had access to internal systems and tools, and this how the malicious actors ended up with access to the high-profile accounts. “We know they used this access to take control of many highly-visible (including verified) accounts and Tweet on their behalf. We’re looking into what other malicious activity they may have conducted or information they may have accessed and will share more here as we have it,” Twitter says. A 17-year-old from Tampa is at the center of a Twitter hack scheme which gave him and two others access to the high-profile accounts of Bill Gates, Barack Obama and many other celebrities with millions of followers, authorities say. Graham Ivan Clark was arrested Friday at his home in Greater Northdale, according to the Hillsborough State Attorney’s Office. The two others charged Friday are 22-year-old Nima Fazeli of Orlando and 19-year-old Mason Sheppard of the United Kingdom, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office in California. Clark’s scheme was to steal the identities of prominent people, then post messages in their names directing victims to send Bitcoin to accounts he owned. The accounts received more than 400 transfers and he reaped more than $100,000 in Bitcoin in just one day, the state attorney’s office said Friday.