Cryptocurrency Scam Spreads Across High-Profile Twitter Accounts

This is a developing story.

Several high-profile Twitter accounts were hijacked in a wide-ranging cryptocurrency scam in which attackers are manipulating followers into transferring funds.

Affected accounts belong to businesses and individuals including Apple, Bitcoin, CashApp, Coindesk, Coinbase, Uber, Barack Obama, Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Bill Gates, Joe Biden, Michael Bloomberg, and Kanye West. Some account owners quickly took control of their profiles and deleted the tweets. 

Some tweets promised to double payments sent to a specific Bitcoin address for the following 30 minutes. Bill Gates' account, for example, promised to send $2,000 back to people who sent $1,000. A similar message appeared on Elon Musk's account, which posted a tweet saying, "I'll double any BTC payment sent to my BTC address for the next hour," followed by a URL. 

RiskIQ has published a list of domains allegedly connected to this scam, giving further insight into the extent of people and corporations targeted. It's unclear how widespread the incident is, but so far the scammers have collected at least $103,000.

It is so far unclear whether the activity can be attributed to individual account hacks or a larger Twitter compromise. Some security experts have noted the extent of accounts affected could indicate the attackers leveraged the Twitter platform instead of targeting individual accounts.

Read more details here.

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