Twitter accounts belonging to prominent Americans including ex-President Barack Obama, ex-Vice President Joe Biden and billionaires Bill Gates and Elon Musk were hacked on Wednesday, CNN reported.
According to CNN, posted tweets that appeared to be a cryptocurrency scam were promoted on the accounts.
The accounts, along with those of other prominent Americans like Kanye West, Kim Kardashian West, Warren Buffett, Jeff Bezos and Mike Bloomberg, posted similar tweets soliciting donations via Bitcoin to their verified profiles on Wednesday.
“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 sheer number of prominent accounts impacted made it arguably the biggest security incident in Twitter’s history.