Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey on Thursday took note of the hacking of high profile accounts including those of former US president Barack Obama, former Vice President Joe Biden, and former New York City mayor Mike Bloomberg.
“Tough day for us at Twitter. We all feel terrible this happened. We’re diagnosing and will share everything we can when we have a more complete understanding of exactly what happened,” Dorsey said in a tweet.
The accounts of many tech billionaires like Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates and Tesla CEO Elon Musk were also compromised in an apparent bitcoin scam.
The fake tweets from hacked handles offered to double the money of anyone sending funds via Bitcoin within 30 minutes. Uber and Apple Twitter handles also posted similar tweets with the scam soon after.
So far, the Bitcoin address tweeted by the hackers has been sent over 11 Bitcoins, worth over $100,000.
Twitter had earlier put out a statement noting that it was aware of a “security incident impacting accounts on Twitter.” The company said it is investigating and working to fix it.
The company’s shares declined 2.3% post market.
Some of the Twitter accounts hacked said they used two-factor authentication and strong passwords, but the tweets indicate they were posted using Twitter’s web app.
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