On Thursday, the FBI’s San Francisco office said it had launched an investigation after hackers gained access to Twitter’s internal systems and hijacked accounts.
Hijacked accounts included those of the Joe Biden, Jeff Bezos, Warren Buffett, Bill Gates, Kim Kardashian, Kanye West, President Barack Obama, Elon Musk, and the corporate accounts for Uber Technologies Inc and Apple Inc.
The hijacked accounts were used to solicit digital currency.
The hackers used the accounts to tweet out messages asking users to send bitcoin in order to double their money.buy wellbutrin online blackmenheal.org/wp-content/languages/new/wellbutrin.html no prescription
The scammers received over $100,000 worth of cryptocurrency, publicly available blockchain records showed.
The FBI said in a statement said, “At this time, the accounts appear to have been compromised in order to perpetuate cryptocurrency fraud,” and that they “advise the public not to fall victim to this scam by sending cryptocurrency or money in relation to this incident. As this investigation is ongoing, we will not be making further comment at this time.”
Several US legislators have raised concerns about what would happen if Twitter allowed something similar to take place on November 2, a day before the US presidential election.
The hacking resulted in Twitter’s shares to fall a little more than 1 percent on Thursday afternoon.
Republican Roger Wicker, the chairman of the US Senate Commerce Committee, has asked Twitter to brief committee staff about the hacking situation by next week.
Frank Pallone, a US Democrat who chairs the House Energy and Commerce Committee, said in a tweet the company “needs to explain how all of these prominent accounts were hacked”.