130 Twitter accounts belonging to celebrities, politicians and entrepreneurs were targeted during a Twitter hacking attack, the social media giant has confirmed.
Twitter stated that hackers made use of resources that should only have been available to their own employees and on Wednesday, the security breach saw the accounts of Barack Obama, Kim Kardashian, Elon Musk, Kanye West, Joe Biden, Bill Gates and more used to tweet a Bitcoin scam.
The scam prompted social media users to send money to a Bitcoin account with the promise of the received funds being doubled.
The hackers were able to scam people out of over £80,000.
Twitter has also reported that the hackers accessed data from up to eight of those accounts.
As the attackers were able to use the download information using the ‘Your Twitter Data’ function, they could have access to affected users’ direct messages, contacts and history of physical location.
Of the 130 hacked accounts, 45 had their passwords reset by the hackers.
“The attackers successfully manipulated a small number of employees and used their credentials to access Twitter’s internal systems,” Twitter said in a statement.
“We are continuing our investigation of this incident, working with law enforcement, and determining longer-term actions we should take to improve the security of our systems.”
Twitter added, “We’re embarrassed, we’re disappointed, and more than anything, we’re sorry.”