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Twitter says about 130 accounts were targeted in cyber attack this week

Published 17/07/2020, 07:12
Updated 17/07/2020, 08:00
© Reuters. FILE PHOTO: The Twitter logo and binary cyber codes are seen in this illustration

© Reuters. FILE PHOTO: The Twitter logo and binary cyber codes are seen in this illustration

(Reuters) - Twitter Inc (N:TWTR) disclosed late on Thursday that hackers targeted about 130 accounts during the cyber attack this week, an incident in which profiles of many prominent personalities and organizations were compromised.

Hackers had accessed Twitter's internal systems to hijack some of the platform's top voices including U.S. presidential candidate Joe Biden, reality TV star Kim Kardashian, former U.S. President Barack Obama and billionaire Elon Musk and used them to solicit digital currency.

In its latest statement, Twitter said that the hackers were able to gain control to a "small subset" of the targeted accounts, and send tweets from them. (https://

The company added that it was continuing to assess whether the attackers were able to access private data of the targeted accounts.

The high-profile accounts that were hacked also included rapper Kanye West, Amazon.com Inc (O:AMZN) founder Jeff Bezos, investor Warren Buffett, Microsoft Corp (O:MSFT) co-founder Bill Gates, and the corporate accounts for Uber Technologies Inc (N:UBER) and Apple Inc (O:AAPL).

Twitter reiterated that it was working with impacted account owners.

The FBI's San Francisco division is leading an inquiry into the hacking, with many Washington lawmakers also calling for an accounting of how it happened.

The law enforcement agency said that cyber attackers committed cryptocurrency fraud in the incident. Publicly available blockchain records show the apparent scammers received more than $100,000 worth of cryptocurrency.

© Reuters. FILE PHOTO: The Twitter logo and binary cyber codes are seen in this illustration

"We're still in the process of assessing longer-term steps that we may take and will share more details as soon as we can," Twitter added in its statement.

Latest comments

CNN: Neither Ivanka Trump nor President Donald Trump's account appeared to have been affected by the hack; the White House declined to comment on the matter Wednesday afternoon. White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany said Wednesday that Dan Scavino, Director of Social Media at the White House, has been in "constant contact" with Twitter over the last 18 hours to keep the president's account secure.
The hack that brought Twitter to a halt on Wednesday took over the accounts of many of the world's most famous people, from Barack Obama to Bill Gates. But one account was notable by its absence - that of US President Donald Trump. But his account was left untouched. “The president will remain on Twitter. His account was secure and not jeopardised during these attacks,” a White House spokesman said on Thursday.
Why wasn't Donald Trump targeted in the Twitter hack? - according to other sources- Trump supposedly hacking now reported also being hacked is an after thought according to initial reporting of all articles - Trump is a big manipulator - why is he now included when suggested to be behind this hacking -
someone wants to destroy Twitter and pretend also to be a victim to this hacking- this person is a manipulater and will always destroy when you disgree to its command - can imagine who this person is
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