Twitter account hack: Warren Buffett, Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, others hit in Bitcoin scam; here is what happened

Social media was sent into a tizzy late last night after Twitter accounts of several high profile leaders were hacked. Unidentified hackers broke into the Twitter accounts of financial and technology moguls, politicians, celebrities and major companies Wednesday in an apparent Bitcoin scam. The ruse included bogus tweets from former US President Barack Obama, Democratic presidential front-runner Joe Biden, Mike Bloomberg and a number of financial and tech billionaires including Berkshire Hathaway chief and market guru Warren Buffett, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates and Tesla CEO Elon Musk.

Others hit by the hack included singer Kanye West and his wife, Kim Kardashian West. There is no evidence that the owners of these accounts were targeted themselves. Instead, the hacks appeared designed to lure their Twitter followers into sending money to an anonymous Bitcoin account. Several accounts of cryptocurrency-focused organizations were also hijacked.

What actually happened?

In what appeared to be cryptocurrency fraud, fake tweets were sent out from these accounts, offering to send $2,000 for every $1,000 sent to an anonymous Bitcoin address. The FBI said it was aware of Twitter's security breach, but declined further comment.

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In a tweet, Twitter noted that it was aware of a ‘security incident impacting accounts on Twitter.’ The San Francisco company said it is investigating and promised an update shortly. The apparently fake tweets were all quickly deleted.

The Bitcoin account mentioned in the fake tweets appears to have been created on Wednesday. By the end of the day, it had received almost 12.9 bitcoins, an amount currently valued at slightly more than $114,000. At some point during the day, roughly half that sum in bitcoin was withdrawn from the account.

Are the users affected?

Even though normal users seem unaffected, the security problem was severe enough for Twitter to warn that many of its more than 166 million daily users might be unable to tweet or reset their passwords while the company tried to lock things down.