Twitter accounts belonging to famous Americans were hacked Wednesday, CNN reported, including former President Barack Obama, former Vice President Joe Biden and billionaires Bill Gates and Elon Musk.
Posted tweets which appeared to be a cryptocurrency scam were promoted on the accounts, according to CNN.
The accounts, along with those of other influential Americans such as Kanye West, Kim Kardashian West, Warren Buffett, Jeff Bezos, and Mike Bloomberg, posted similar tweets on Wednesday demanding donations to their verified profiles via Bitcoin.
“Everyone is asking me to give back, and now is the time,” Gates’ tweet said, promising to double all payments to a Bitcoin address for the next 30 minutes.
In a tweet on Wednesday, Twitter’s support account said: “We are aware of a security incident impacting accounts on Twitter. We are investigating and taking steps to fix it. We will update everyone shortly.”
“You may be unable to Tweet or reset your password while we review and address this incident,” Twitter’s support account said.
The overwhelming number of famous accounts that were compromised made it probably the largest security breach in the history of Twitter.
