2020 July, 21, 07:27:37 AM

The Recent High-profile Hack Of Twitter Accounts Where 12 BTC

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Cointelegraph.com:- The recent high-profile hack of Twitter accounts where 12 BTC was stolen is being investigated, and some exchanges may already know who did it.

July 15 will go down as an infamous day for Twitter, as an unknown attacker managed to take control of a number of accounts on the social media platform before duping unwary users into a Bitcoin giveaway hoax.

The event grabbed media attention, as some of the world’s most notable companies, politicians, and business leaders had their accounts compromised before sharing similar messages touting a Bitcoin (BTC) giveaway that required users to send coins to an address before receiving double that amount back.

The likes of Tesla founder Elon Musk, former United States President Barack Obama, 2020 U.S. presidential candidate Joe Biden, Amazon owner Jeff Bezos as well as Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates had their accounts taken over to share similar messages telling users to send $1,000 to an address in order to receive $2,000 in BTC in return.


The company Twitter accounts of Apple, Uber and CashApp were also used to share the duplicitous messages. The accounts of Hollywood celebrity couple Kanye West and Kim Kardashian and of rappers Wiz Khalifa and the late XXXTentacion were also victims, among other famous people.

Notable cryptocurrency figures Changpeng “CZ” Zhao, Justin Sun, Charlie Lee, King Cobie and AngeloBTC also had their accounts hacked. Major cryptocurrency exchanges Binance, Coinbase, Bitfinex and Gemini fell victim to the attack along with the Twitter accounts of Bitcoin and Ripple.

Some of these accounts did not directly list the same Bitcoin address as Musk and others but rather prompted users to visit a malicious website in order to be considered for a fake 5,000 BTC giveaway. Users would allegedly receive double the amount of BTC they sent to the given address.

The website has since been taken down, and the domain registration information has now been removed from the Whois domain registration database for privacy reasons. Nevertheless, the name of the registered owner and their physical address was widely published.

The latest search of the BTC address shared by Musk and other compromised Twitter accounts shows that it has received 12.86584703 BTC since the heist began. The attackers also tried to gain control of the Cointelegraph’s Twitter account but were unsuccessful.

For some of the unfortunate targets of the hack such as CZ, who is the CEO of Binance, such a large-scale hack of Twitter accounts belonging to high-profile users and the theft of over 12 BTC is “a wake up call for social media platforms.”

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