Twitter (TWTR) slid as much as 3% in after-hours trading as the company tried to swat down hackers that had taken over the accounts of multiple high-profile users.
Accounts belonging to Barack Obama, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Kanye West, Joe Biden, Warren Buffet, Apple and many others had their accounts compromised Wednesday afternoon, all posting tweets directing users to a Bitcoin scam. The scam directs the account’s followers to send a certain number of Bitcoin to a blockchain address.
A Twitter spokesperson told Stockpence the company was “looking into” the matter but didn’t immediately comment.
The chaos began when Elon Musk’s Twitter account was seemingly compromised by a hacker intent on using it to run a bitcoin scam. Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates’ account was also seemingly accessed by the same scammer, who posted a similar message with an identical bitcoin wallet address. Both accounts continued to post new tweets promoting the scam almost as fast as they were deleted, and Musk’s account in particular appears to still be under the control of the hacker as of 5:56PM ET.
