Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

posted by chromas on Thursday July 16 2020, @12:45AM   Printer-friendly
from the TANSTAAFL dept.

Musk, Obama, Biden, Bezos, Gates—bitcoin scam hits Twitter in coordinated blitz:

Twitter accounts of the rich and famous—including Elon Musk, Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, and Joe Biden—were simultaneously hijacked on Wednesday and used to push cryptocurrency scams.

As of 3:58 PM California time, the wallet address used to receive victim’s digital coin had received more than $118,000, though it wasn't clear all of it came from people who fell for the scam. It The bitcoin came from 356 transactions all occurred over about a four-hour span on Tuesday. The wallet address appeared in tweets from at least 15 accounts—some with tens of millions of followers—that promoted fraudulent incentives to transfer money.

“I’m giving back to all my followers,” one now-deleted tweet from Musk’s account said. “I am doubling all payments sent to the Bitcoin address below. You send 0.1 BTC, I send 0.2 BTC back!” A tweet from the Bezos account said the same thing. “Everyone is asking me to give back, and now is the time,” a Gates tweet said. “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.

Other hijacked accounts belonged to Barack Obama, Apple, Kanye West, and a raft of cryptocurrency entrepreneurs.

[...] That so many social media accounts were taken over in such a short time and remained hijacked for so long is extraordinary if not unprecedented.

[...] As the hijackings continued, Twitter said that while it investigated, it was suspending the ability of many but not all Twitter users to tweet or respond to tweets. Accounts belonging to verified users were unable to use the platform except to send direct messages. Instead they got a message that said: "This request looks like it might be automated. To protect our users from spam and other malicious activity, we can’t complete this action right now. Please try again later." Unverified accounts worked normally.

If it looks too good to be true...

Also at: AlJazeera, BBCTech, CNET, MITTech, SecurityWeek, and Threatpost.


Original Submission

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 2, Touché) by hemocyanin on Thursday July 16 2020, @04:56AM (1 child)

    by hemocyanin (186) on Thursday July 16 2020, @04:56AM (#1022288) Journal

    If it looks to good to be true...

    ... Accounts belonging to verified users were unable to use the platform ...

    Looks all good from here.

    Starting Score:    1  point
    Moderation   +1  
       Touché=1, Total=1
    Extra 'Touché' Modifier   0  

    Total Score:   2  
  • (Score: 2) by DannyB on Thursday July 16 2020, @03:07PM

    by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Thursday July 16 2020, @03:07PM (#1022427) Journal

    Hopefully this incident will not affect the administration's plans to modernize the US Nuclear Launch system to receive launch orders via Twitter.

    --
    People today are educated enough to repeat what they are taught but not to question what they are taught.