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Bill Gates and Elon Musk just had their Twitter accounts hacked in apparent crypto scam




Bill Gates and Elon Musk had their Twitter accounts hacked Wednesday afternoon in an apparent cryptocurrency giveaway scam. Other accounts including Square’s CashApp and Coinbase were also hacked.
The tweet above was posted from Gates’ account at 1:34 p.m. PT, but was then deleted. The same tweet from Gates appeared at 1:48 p.m. PT.
A tweet from Musk was sent out just before 1:30 p.m. PT and was also deleted, before another appeared at 1:50 p.m. PT.
Looks like Elon may have been hacked pic.twitter.com/H3SbSU8NJI
- Mathew Ingram (@mathewi) July 15, 2020


UPDATE: @elonmusk, @CashApp and @Ripple also appear to be compromised, among other prominent accounts. CoinDesk has reached out to Twitter for comment. https://t.co/l0q5PwuJ32
- CoinDesk (@CoinDesk) July 15, 2020

There have been nearly 200 transactions to the bitcoin address mentioned in Gates’ and Musk’s tweets. It’s around $50,000 so far. Yikes
- Tom Warren (@tomwarren) July 15, 2020


Wow — massive sitewide hack. Search on “doubling all payments” — it’s not just billlionaires spewing this…. https://t.co/9Hj3ofeyI4
- Mark Harris (@meharris) July 15, 2020

I was wrong. This is 100% Twitter hack. No one is safe https://t.co/ISqtOh4ucI
- Larry Cermak (@lawmaster) July 15, 2020

The Verge noted that Musk has been targeted by bitcoin scammers in the past.
We’ve reached out to Bill Gates’ spokesperson and Twitter, and will update this story as we learn more.

Originally published at https://www.geekwire.com 

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