SAN FRANCISCO: Twitter said hackers accessed its internal systems to hijack some of the platform's top voices including US presidential candidate Joe Biden, reality TV star Kim Kardashian, former US President Barack Obama and billionaire Elon Musk and used them to solicit digital currency.
Twitter said employees with access to its internal systems had been successfully targeted by hackers who "used this access to take control of many highly-visible (including verified) accounts and Tweet on their behalf."
"We're looking into what other malicious activity they may have conducted or information they may have accessed and will share more here as we have it," the company said.
Twitter temporarily took the extraordinary step of preventing for several hours at least some verified accounts from publishing messages altogether. It said it would restore access only when it was certain it could do so securely.
Publicly available blockchain records show the apparent scammers received more than $100,000 worth of cryptocurrency.
Chief Executive Jack Dorsey earlier said the company was diagnosing the problem and pledged to share "everything we can when we have a more complete understanding of exactly what happened."
"Tough day for us at Twitter. We all feel terrible this happened," he said in a tweet.
SECURITY BREACH
Shares in the social media company tumbled almost 5% in trading after the market close before paring their losses.
In the hours after the initial breach, some of the platform's biggest users appeared to be struggling to re-establish control of their accounts. In the case of billionaire Tesla Chief Executive Elon Musk, for example, one tweet soliciting cryptocurrency was removed and, sometime later, another one appeared, and then a third.
Among other high profile accounts affected: rapper Kanye West, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, investor Warren Buffett, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, and the corporate accounts for Uber and Apple. Several accounts of cryptocurrency-focused organizations were also hijacked.
Altogether, the affected accounts had tens of millions of users.
Biden's campaign was "in touch" with Twitter, according to a person familiar with the matter. The person said the company had locked down the Democrat's account "immediately following the breach and removed the related tweet." Tesla and other affected companies were not immediately available for comment.
Several experts said the incident raised questions about Twitter's cybersecurity.
"It's clear the company is not doing enough to protect itself," said Oren Falkowitz, former CEO of Area 1 Security.
Alperovitch, who now chairs the Silverado Policy Accelerator, said that, in a way, the public had dodged a bullet so far.
"We are lucky that given the power of sending out tweets from the accounts of many famous people, the only thing that the hackers have done is scammed about $110,000 in bitcoins from about 300 people," he said.
The FBI is leading an inquiry into the Twitter hacking, according to sources familiar with the situation, as more Washington lawmakers raised alarms about the breach of high-profile accounts on the social media platform.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation did not immediately respond to a question about it leading an inquiry into Twitter.
A day after the breach, it was not clear if the hackers were able to see private messages sent by the account holders. US lawmakers worried about future attacks.
"While this scheme appears financially motivated...imagine if these bad actors had a different intent to use powerful voices to spread disinformation to potentially interfere with our elections, disrupt the stock market, or upset our international relations," US Senator Ed Markey, a Democrat, said in a statement.
Echoing a similar sentiment, Representative Jim Jordan, the top Republican on the House Judiciary Committee, asked what would happen if Twitter allowed a similar incident to occur on Nov. 2, a day before the US presidential election.
Jordan said he remained locked out of his Twitter account as of Thursday morning and said his confidence in how the company operates has been deteriorating.