FBI leads probe into catastrophic Twitter breach
FBI officials quit after they had sex with prostitutes during an assignment
The domestic intelligence and security service of the United States FBI is leading an inquiry into the Twitter hacking of major companies and individuals, as more Washington lawmakers raised alarms about the breach of high-profile accounts on the social media platform.
Also read: Twitter accounts of Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Bill Gates and others hit in major hack
Earlier the FBI had said that hackers appeared to commit cryptocurrency fraud after they seized control of the Twitter accounts of celebrities and political figures including Joe Biden, Kim Kardashian, Barack Obama and Elon Musk.
Also read |Twitter says Olympics, IOC accounts hacked
Yesterday, in a blitzkrieg, Bitcoin scammers targeted some of the most recognizable faces on Twitter.
Elon Musk's account posted the first of the mysterious tweets - it asked the Twitterati to send money to a Bitcoin wallet address which is like a bank account number for Bitcoin transactions.
Followers were told their money will be doubled. Soon, former president Barack Obama, Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden, the world's richest man - Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, Microsoft's billionaire founder Bill Gates, the i-Phone maker Apple and several other verified accounts began tweeting similar posts.
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Millions of users follow these accounts and they fell into a trap. So far, the hacker has pocketed over 100,000 dollars but it took Twitter two hours to respond to the rapid hacks. For the first time ever it froze all verified accounts and all fake tweets were deleted but they began to reappear as fast as they were being erased.
A day after the breach, it was not clear if the hackers were able to see private messages sent by the account holders. US lawmakers worried about future attacks.
"While this scheme appears financially motivated...imagine if these bad actors had a different intent to use powerful voices to spread disinformation to potentially interfere with our elections, disrupt the stock market, or upset our international relations," U.S. Senator Ed Markey, a Democrat, said in a statement.
(With inputs from agencies)