Joe Biden, Elon Musk, And Barack Obama’s Twitter Accounts Were Hacked In A Bitcoin Scam

Hacked accounts pinned the tweets promoting the giveaway scam to the top of their profiles or retweeted the posts. Other accounts that were hit included rappers Wiz Khalifa and the late XXXTentacion; boxer Floyd Mayweather; and billionaires Jeff Bezos, Michael Bloomberg, and Warren Buffett.

“Twitter locked down the account immediately following the breach and removed the related tweet,” a Biden campaign spokesperson told BuzzFeed News. “We remain in touch with Twitter on the matter.”

In what appeared to be an effort to deal with the security threat, Twitter seemed to prevent many verified accounts from tweeting on Wednesday afternoon. Service to verified accounts was intermittent, though they were still able to like, retweet, and send direct messages. Most unverified accounts remained able to post messages.

“We’re continuing to limit the ability to Tweet, reset your password, and some other account functionalities while we look into this,” the company said from its support account.

A Twitter spokesperson did not return questions as to whether the company specifically limited the abilities of verified accounts. They also did not return questions as to how the hack was perpetrated or if the hacker was able to access other parts of the service, like a user’s direct messages.

The initial bitcoin wallet address associated with the scam showed transactions on Wednesday afternoon suggesting more than $118,000 worth of the cryptocurrency had been deposited, of which about $61,000 worth of bitcoin had been removed. A second wallet, which emerged in subsequent scam tweets, suggested about $5,000 worth of bitcoin had been received, of which $2,700 had been removed.

It’s unclear if that money was from actual unsuspecting individuals or the scammer themself. In past cryptocurrency giveaway scams, perpetrators have seeded wallets with their own money to encourage others to donate.