Some of the world’s richest and most influential politicians, celebrities, tech moguls and companies were the subject of a massive Twitter hack on Wednesday. Elon Musk, Joe Biden, Jeff Bezos, Michael Bloomberg, Kim Kardashian West and Bill Gates were among the accounts pushing out tweets asking millions of followers to send money to a Bitcoin address.
Twitter, in a statement, said the company was aware of the “security incident” and was investigating. The tweets sent by the hackers have since been deleted.
A spokesperson for Bill Gates confirmed a tweet sent from his account was not sent by Gates himself. “This appears to be part of a larger issue that Twitter is facing,” the spokesperson said.
Joe Biden’s campaign issued a similar statement, saying, “Twitter locked down the account immediately following the breach and removed the related tweet.”
There have been at least 355 transactions since the tweets were posted, according to tracking website blockchain.com. So far, the account has received more than $100,000.
Shortly after the incident, many verified users reported they could no longer tweet, including media companies. Verified accounts who attempted to tweet received an error message that read, “To protect our users from spam and other malicious activity, we can’t complete this action right now.”
Twitter acknowledged that some users’ features may be disabled as it investigates: “You may be unable to Tweet or reset your password while we review and address this incident.”
