Twitter appears to have locked all verified accounts, preventing them from tweeting, as the biggest figures on the site were hacked as part of a Bitcoin scam.
This reporter can confirm that while unable to tweet, verified accounts were still able to retweet other non-verified accounts.
GREATEST TWITTER DAY EVER
ALL BLUE CHECKS SILENCED
— Brett MacDonald (@TweetBrettMac) July 15, 2020
Access to the platform was restored for some verified accounts shortly after 6:30 p.m. Eastern. Many were still unable to tweet, however.
The verifieds are back you bitches
— Ryan James Girdusky (@RyanGirdusky) July 15, 2020
On Wednesday, the accounts belonging to Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Elon Musk, Kanye West, Bill Gates, Benjamin Netanyahu, Mike Bloomberg, Apple, Uber and many many more were taken over by hackers promoting a Bitcoin scam.
“I am giving back to my community due to Covid-19!” said the tweet from Obama’s account, which has since been deleted. “All Bitcoin sent to my address below will be sent back doubled. If you send $1,000, I will send back $2,000!”
Similar tweets were sent out, along with a Bitcoin wallet address, from all of the other compromised accounts.
The first scam tweet appears to have been at 4:17PM ET from Elon Musk’s account. It said, “I‘m feeling generous because of Covid-19. I’ll double any BTC payment sent to my BTC address for the next hour. Good luck, and stay safe out there!” It also contained the address of the crypto wallet being used in all of the hacked tweets.
