Some of the biggest names in American politics, entertainment and technology, including Joseph R. Biden Jr., Kanye West, Bill Gates and Elon Musk, appeared to have had their Twitter accounts hacked on Wednesday.
The accounts sent messages related to cyptocurrency, with most of the messages promising to double the money of anyone who sent Bitcoin to a specific cryptocurrency wallet. Within hours of the tweets appearing, nearly 300 people had fallen for the scam, sending more than $100,000 to the wallet. Many of the tweets were quickly removed, but in some cases similar tweets were sent again from the same accounts.
Twitter sent out a message saying that it was investigating the problem and looking to fix it. The Biden campaign said, “Twitter locked down the account immediately following the breach and removed the related tweet. We remain in touch with Twitter on the matter.”
