Billionaires Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and Invoice Gates are among lots of notable US figures qualified by hackers on Twitter in an clear Bitcoin fraud.

The official accounts of Barack Obama, Joe Biden and Kanye West also requested donations in the cryptocurrency.

“Everybody is asking me to give back, and now is the time,” a tweet from Mr Gates’ account reported. “You send out $1,000, I ship you again $2,000.”

The tweets were being deleted just minutes following they ended up first posted.

Twitter took the remarkable stage of stopping numerous confirmed accounts marked with blue ticks from tweeting entirely.

There have been studies that password reset requests ended up also currently being denied.

Dmitri Alperovitch, who co-launched cyber-security corporation CrowdStrike, explained to Reuters news agency: “This appears to be the worst hack of a main social media system nevertheless.”

Twitter explained it was looking into the incident and would problem a statement soon.

On the official account of Mr Musk, the Tesla and SpaceX main appeared to offer to double any Bitcoin payment despatched to the tackle of his electronic wallet “for the next hour”.

“I am sensation generous because of Covid-19,” the tweet added, alongside with a Bitcoin url deal with.

One such tweet from Musk’s account was deleted, only for yet another just one to surface, then a 3rd.

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As effectively as rapper Kanye West, his spouse, truth Tv star Kim Kardashian, previous US President Obama, Mr Biden, who is the existing Democratic presidential prospect, and media billionaire Mike Bloomberg, significant businesses Uber and Apple have been focused.

The Biden campaign said Twitter had “locked down the account in a number of minutes of the breach and eradicated the associated tweet”.

A spokesman for Invoice Gates advised AP news agency: “This seems to be aspect of a much larger problem that Twitter is facing.”

An unparalleled ‘smash and grab’

By Joe Tidy, Cyber-safety reporter

These “double your Bitcoin” scams have been a persistent pest on Twitter for decades but this is unparalleled with the real accounts of public figures hijacked and on a massive scale.

The truth that so quite a few distinct users have been compromised at the very same time implies that this is a trouble with Twitter’s platform itself.

Early solutions are that a person has managed to get keep of some sort of administration privileges and bypassed the passwords of really considerably any account they want.

With so a great deal energy at their fingertips the attackers could have done a whole lot additional destruction with far more advanced tweets that could have harmed an unique or organisation’s standing.

But the motive would seem to be very clear – make as considerably money as speedily as they can. The hackers would have acknowledged that the tweets would not continue to be up for long so this was the equal of a “smash and grab” procedure.

There are conflicting accounts of how much cash the hackers have manufactured and even when a figure is settled upon, it’s significant to recall that cyber-criminals are recognized to include their have money into their Bitcoin wallets to make the rip-off seem to be much more genuine.

Possibly way, it truly is likely to be very challenging to capture the criminals by pursuing the funds. Law enforcement, as properly as many indignant consumers, will have some solid thoughts for Twitter about how this could have transpired.

Cameron Winklevoss, who was declared the world’s to start with Bitcoin billionaire in 2017 along with his twin brother Tyler, tweeted a information on Wednesday warning folks not to take part in the “scam”.

In the short time it was on the web, the hyperlink shown in the tweets of targeted accounts acquired hundreds of contributions totalling more than $100,000 (£80,000), according to publicly out there blockchain documents.

The Twitter accounts targeted all have tens of millions of followers.