image via twitter screenshot

A hack incident that shook the internet and cryptocurrency world took place yesterday evening. Individuals or groups who hacked some of Twitter’s most influential accounts, such as Elon Musk, Bill Gates, Apple, and Jeff Bezos, attempted a Bitcoin scam. Moreover, by the morning hours, 12.8 BTC (approximately 120 thousand dollars, 800 thousand TL) had already been transferred to the given account using this method.

In a statement made from his account, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey said he was very upset about the issue and that the team was working hard to shed light on the incident. The Twitter Support account is transparently sharing developments regarding the incident. As far as I understand from the statements, the initial findings look like a social engineering incident involving people with Twitter admin privileges. Following the incident, verified accounts were locked and prevented from tweeting.

Some of the hacked accounts:

  • Jeff Bezos
  • Elon Musk
  • Warren Buffett
  • Barack Obama
  • Michael Bloomberg
  • Kanye West
  • Wiz Khalifa
  • Apple
  • Uber
  • JoeBiden
  • Bitcoin
  • Coinbase
  • Binance
  • Gemini
  • Kucoin
  • Coindesk
  • Ripple
  • Justin Sun
  • Charlee Lee
  • SatoshiLite
  • and more…

If you ask me, hacking such high-profile Twitter accounts that are monitored 24 hours a day and (I presume) have 2-step verification is not a situation that can be simply explained by someone taking over the admin panel. I think the plans of those who carry out an action that will make such a splash wouldn’t be just for 100 thousand-odd dollars. Although I have no evidence and will explain it purely based on my gut feelings, I believe it is probable that US government officials and perhaps deeper structures are involved in the incident. Where this incident evolves will reveal whether the events experienced are a special operation against social media platforms or Twitter specifically.

Update (22.07.2021) : About a year later, Joseph O’Connor, a British citizen, was arrested in the town of Estepona, Spain, for his alleged involvement in the Twitter hack in July 2020.