A massive attack hit the crypto Twitter Wednesday as many prominent accounts have begun to tweet about a gift Bitcoin . Soon it became clear that the breach was much more serious when big companies and famous people tweeted that they would double your bitcoin , including Apple, Google, Joe Biden, Elon Musk, Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, Kanye West, Barack Obama and Uber.
Major attack on Crypto Twitter with a Bitcoin Giveaway scam
On Wednesday afternoon, the Twitter accounts of many people and well-known companies of the crypto space have started tweeting about a gift Bitcoin . The crypto community quickly noticed the scam and warned others not to send bitcoin to fraudsters. Cryptowhale's Twitter account wrote:
Thousands of popular cryptographic pages have been hacked into a massive Twitter violation ... Don't send your funds to anyone.
At the time of publication, it appeared that the compromised accounts included those of Binance , Bitcoin , Bitfinex, the creator of Litecoin Charlie Lee, Coinbase , Coindesk, the CEO of Binance Changpeng Zhao (CZ), Gemini, the founder of Tron , Justin Sun, Kucoin, Ripple, the Tron Foundation and the founder of Ethereum , Vitalik Buterin. Most of them have tweeted, "We have partnered with and give back Cryptoforhealth 5000 BTC to the community," followed by the URL of the website of the scam.
The Cryptoforhealth scam website was quickly taken offline. Kristaps Ronka, CEO of Namesilo, the domain registrar used by scammers, told Techcrunch that the domain had been suspended "on the first report" that the company had received.
Hacking Goes Beyond Crypto Twitter, High-Level Accounts Tweet About Bitcoin Giveaway Scam
The attack goes far beyond the crypto Twitter while larger companies, their founders, CEOs and prominent personalities have begun to tweet about a gift Bitcoin similar. They include accounts from Apple, former President Barack Obama, Microsoft founder Bill Gates, Cash App, Spacex and Tesla CEO Elon Musk, Floyd Mayweather, Google, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos , from the Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden, from Kanye West, from former New York. City Mayor Mike Bloomberg, Mr. Beast, Uber and Berkshire Hathaway CEO Warren Buffett.
Many accounts, including that of Jeff Bezos, has tweeted: "I decided to give back to my community. All bitcoins sent to my address below will be returned doubled. I only make a maximum of $ 50,000,000. bc1qxy2kgdygjrsqtzq2n0yrf2493p83kkfjhx0wlh Enjoy. ”
This particular BTC address used by scammers raised 12,862 BTC with a total value of around $ 118,495 at press time. Transactions can be tracked here .
Some reports, including that of Barack Obama, has tweeted: "I give to my community because of Covid-19. All bitcoins sent to my address below will be returned doubled. If you send $ 1,000, I will send you back $ 2,000… It will only be done for the next 30 minutes. Enjoy."
Most of the tweets were quickly deleted by the account owners. Some accounts, such as Elon Musk, has made several tweets about the scam Bitcoin after deletion. However, not all of the affected accounts were popular; there were some with about 10 subscribers tweeting about the same bitcoin scam .
How did this massive security breach happen?
The sheer scale of the security breach means that many people speculate on how the attack happened. Many victims of the violation are still investigating the cause of the piracy. Some speculate that the Twitter API was compromised when several people say that the hacked Twitter accounts did not configure 2FA - but this theory was quickly challenged. "In any case, all these accounts are not protected by strong passwords and TOTP 2FA," tweeted the famous crypto author Andreas Antonopoulos. Gemini Exchange co-founder Tyler Winklevoss said, “We activated 2FA for Gemini. We are currently studying [the] root cause. "
Malwaretech tweeted: “Hearing a lot of unconfirmed rumors, a Twitter employee with access to the user management panel was hacked.” Antonopoulos added:
Given the accounts that have been hacked more recently (Apple, Uber, Gates, Musk, etc. ), I now lean toward being an internal compromise of a Twitter system, not an attack API of a social aggregator service.
After about eight hours, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey finally tweeted, “It's been a tough day for us on Twitter. We all feel terrible. We will diagnose and share everything we can when we have a more complete understanding of what exactly happened. Meanwhile, the price of bitcoin remains largely unchanged by news of the hack, currently still around $ 9,200.