More accounts of prominent personalities on Twitter are reportedly being hacked, with an unnamed Dutch politician added to the list, The Washington Post reported.
Over the last week, Twitter battled with a number of high profile accounts apparently being hacked to pursue a massive cryptocurrency scam.
Hackers just took control of the Twitter accounts of Bill Gates, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos (& Apple), Kanye West and Mike Bloomberg. Shows you how even the world's richest & most powerful people are just as vulnerable as anyone else. It's like an episode of Mr. Robot. #Hacked pic.twitter.com/nzGXn2oMvg — Jake Morphonios www.blackstoneintel.com (@morphonios) July 15, 2020
The company has officially stated that 130 accounts have been targetted by hackers who are using instruments available only to the website's internal support groups.
These tools paved the way for attackers to change the accounts' passwords, log in to them, and send wrong tweets carrying the name of famous personalities, such as @BarackObama.
Twitter accounts
The accounts of presidential candidate Joe Biden, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, Tesla CEO Elon Musk, Kanye West, Bill Gates, Apple, and Coinbase are among those who fell victim to the hacking, the report further noted.
The followers of the accounts then received information that they have to forward Bitcoins over to a web wallet to have their funds multiplied. Despite this, there are now more than $100,000 that have been forwarded to these hackers or scammers.
Not just this, but what worries the owners and managers of these accounts are the private messages that could be accessed since the hackers can have information on the log-ins and passwords. These are known as DMs or direct messages.
These allegedly may be used to blackmail other people by leveraging these private messages.
Furthermore, Twitter revealed that one of these prominent personalities was an elected official in Europe, specifically in the Netherlands. However, no blackmailing or threats have happened yet as of press time.
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Dutch politician
Unlike Obama, Musk, or Gates, this politician was not named in the media reports, but he or she has been part of the high-profile Twitter hack.
Earlier reports said that the hack happened to an elected politician.
Could this be the Dutch official?
However, it is later revealed that the politician is anti-Islam lawmaker Geert Wilders. He said that Twitter informed him on Thursday that a hacker has infiltrated his account and has been sending false DMs. Wilders revealed that the hacker "indeed also got full access to my DM's which of course is totally unacceptable in many way."
He joins around 130 accounts targeted on the social networking platform. Twitter, though expressed embarrassment about the hack, which has already compromised accounts and their high profile tweets, and a massive number of followers.
Pensioenen dreigen toch te worden gekort. Zorghelden kregen er nog geen cent bij. Tienduizenden nieuwe werklozen en failliete bedrijven. Boeren worden afgeknepen. En Rutte tekent bij het kruisje voor honderden miljarden € voor Italië, Spanje en andere landen. Schande!#StemPVV pic.twitter.com/jMlwLo2fZs — Geert Wilders (@geertwilderspvv) July 21, 2020
