Hackers have struck again. This time, they have targeted the email accounts of celebrities, including Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, and President Barack Obama. And, before you brush off this as another security issue, it’s important to note that hacked accounts are more than just email addresses. These accounts might contain your Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, and YouTube logins, and it can lead to identity theft.
In a tweet on Thursday, Barack Obama revealed that his Twitter account was hacked this week. And it wasn’t the first time he fell victim to such an attack. According to Digital Trends, the president’s account was hacked in February 2015. While it may have taken two years, the hacker finally admitted that he had hacked in.
Hackers stole more than $100,000 from three of the most powerful people: Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, and Barack Obama. Though these high-profile hacks are nothing new, they’ve gained a lot more attention this year, with the high profile of all three targets. The attackers gained access to Bezos’, Gates’s, and Obama’s Amazon, Microsoft, and email accounts.
Twitter updated its security page with details about a huge data breach last week that affected 200,000 accounts. Later this year, the breach was discovered when Twitter engineers detected an abnormal amount of login attempts coming from a particular IP address. Twitter immediately disabled the accounts that were affected. Still, some remain active now, so security researchers were able to exploit a security flaw in one of the apps to access some accounts.
Twitter huge data breach and hacked high profile accounts
In what looks to be a large-scale and organized cryptocurrency breach, the Twitter accounts of some of the wealthiest and most prominent people on the social media site have been hacked. These include Barrack Obama, Jeff Bezos, and Bill gates.
NPR confirmed the occurrences with a Twitter official, who said the company is now taking a precaution and investigating the breach and malicious tweet shared by multiple users and are ready to take down the posts. According to Twitter, “until we review and handle this occurrence,” users may not be able to update Tweet or reset their passwords.
The first and most popular shared tweet was Bill gates tweet. He’s the first high profile that got hacked and created a malicious tweet about giving away money. Using Gates’ email address, the hackers wrote, “Everyone is begging me to pay back and now is the time.” “For the next 30 minutes, I’m doubling all payments submitted to my BTC address. $1,000 is sent to me, and I return $2,000.”
