Some of the hacked accounts had a two-factor authentication system. Most of the affected companies are currently under investigation.
Last July 15th, there was a mass hack into multiple Twitter accounts, whereby criminals committed a theft equivalent to USD 123,000 worth of Bitcoin. Several of the affected people (or close people) have expressed their reactions to the social network.
The affected accounts, linked to the cryptocurrency sector, include that of the exchange Gemini. Cameron Winklevoss, Co-founder of the platform, states on his Twitter account that Gemini had both a strong password and an activated two-factor authentication system.
It is not clear to Winklevoss how the hackers compromised these accounts and were able to bypass 2F authentication. Before that event, his brother Tyler Winklevoss had already posted a warning tweet. There, he said that the Binance and Coinbase accounts had also suffered attacks from hackers, so he recommended not clicking on the links.
In parallel, the Binance en español support team reacted, offering recommendations to users concerning the security of their cryptocurrencies. It is important to remember that there have been complaints about this type of situation in the past.
Hours before, an unidentified spokesman for the exchange said that the security team was actively investigating the situation of this coordinated attack on the cryptocurrency industry.
For his part, Bill Gates spokesman Teddy Schleifer confirmed that the Microsoft co-founder did not send that message on his initiative. Schleifer stated via Twitter that they can confirm that Bill Gates did not send that tweet. He added that the situation seems to be part of a bigger problem. Likewise, he said that Twitter is aware and working to recover the account.
Uber, the company that provides international transportation services through a mobile application, also mentioned the hack. The company’s communications team said that a scammer hit their @Uber account on July 15th. They removed the tweet and are working directly with @Twitter to discover what happened exactly.
According to information published in various media, many of those affected have no commented on the matter so far. This could be because the mass hack is recent and possibly all of them are in an early stage of investigation.
The Twitter profiles hacked on July 15th showed a pinned message that linked to a website of a well-known scam. This message encouraged users to send bitcoins to a wallet with the promise that they would receive them back multiplied.
The list of the attacked profiles includes well-known people and institutions, such as Barack Obama, Warren Buffet, Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Joe Biden, Bill Gates, Mike Bloomberg, Wiz Khalifa, Uber, Apple, Ripple, and Bitcoin, among others.
So far, most of the affected users have removed those messages. At the same time, a Twitter spokesperson said that the company is investigating the problem.
Cryptocurrency users have to be alert to the risks of clicking on links attached to messages that they receive. Hackers take advantage of famous people and reputed institutions to attract their victims.
By Alexander Salazar
