Twitter Bitcoin hack: Kanye West, Elon Musk and Bill Gates all have accounts HACKED by scammers who swindle - The Sun

SOME of the world's richest and most powerful people have been targeted by Bitcoin scammers who swindled hundreds of victims out of £80,000.

Kanye West, Elon Musk and Bill Gates are among those to be targeted in one of Twitter's biggest ever hacks last night.

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Elon Musk's was one of the high profile Twitter accounts that was hackedCredit: AFP or licensors

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Bill Gates' account also tweeted out the bizarre messageCredit: Getty Images - Getty

The accounts urged people to send $1,000 (£794) Bitcoins - a type of cryptocurrency - to an address.

In return, users are promised their money will be doubled and returned to them.

The message read: "I am giving back to my community due to Covid-19! All Bitcoin sent to my address below will be sent back doubled."If you send $1,000, I will send back $2,000!

"Only doing this for the next 30 minutes! Enjoy."

The address linked to the scam appears to have received more than 11.3 BTC, or roughly £82,800 so far according to Coinbase, a cryptocurrency specialist website.

Credit: PA:Press Association

Credit: PA:Press Association

The tech-savvy thieves also managed to hack the world's richest man, Amazon boss Jeff Bezos, along with the second richest, ex-Microsoft chief Gates, and the fourth wealthiest, investor Warren Buffet.

They also targeted Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden and former President Barack Obama, who has more than 120 million followers.

Huge corporations Apple and Uber were also compromised.

Twitter took the incredible step of temporarily blocking all verified accounts from tweeting for a short while and shares fell nearly 4 percent.

The company's CEO Jack Dorsey tweeted: "Tough day for us at Twitter.

"We all feel terrible this happened.

"We’re diagnosing and will share everything we can when we have a more complete understanding of exactly what happened."

Kanye West's account was hacked twice in the space of an hour with the same message posted.

Most of the tweets were deleted within a number of minutes, but many had been retweeted thousands of times.

The scale suggests crooks have been able to totally bypass Twitter’s security.

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Former US President Barack Obama's account was also compromisedCredit: AP:Associated Press

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Kanye West's account tweeted out the message about BitcoinCredit: AFP or licensors

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Likely Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden's account was reportedly also targetedCredit: AFP or licensors

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The world's richest person, Jeff Bezos, had his account hitCredit: AFP - Getty

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The world's fourth richest man Warren Buffet was also targetedCredit: EPA

Fraudsters cash in on coronavirus crisis by selling fake safety masks

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https://news.google.com/__i/rss/rd/articles/CBMiVmh0dHBzOi8vd3d3LnRoZXN1bi5jby51ay90ZWNoLzEyMTM2MDIwL3R3aXRlci1iaXRjb2luLWhhY2stZWxvbi1tdXNrLWJpbGwtZ2F0ZXMta2FueWUv0gFaaHR0cHM6Ly93d3cudGhlc3VuLmNvLnVrL3RlY2gvMTIxMzYwMjAvdHdpdGVyLWJpdGNvaW4taGFjay1lbG9uLW11c2stYmlsbC1nYXRlcy1rYW55ZS9hbXAv?oc=5

2020-07-16 06:23:00Z
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