On Wednesday, July 15, 2020, several different high-profile Twitter accounts were nefariously accessed by Bitcoin scammers, including Apple’s official account.
At the time of publication, the offending tweet has been removed from Twitter. However, the official Apple Twitter account, including other accounts belonging to the likes of Microsoft’s former CEO Bill Gates, Tesla’s CEO Elon Musk, Amazon’s CEO Jeff Bezos, and others, was hacked earlier today. The Bitcoin scammers posted a tweet that reads:
We are giving back to our community. We support Bitcoin and we believe you should too!
All Bitcoin sent to our address below will be sent back to you doubled!
Only going on for the next 30 minutes.
The tweet included a Bitcoin address where the cryptocurrency could be sent to. However, this is obviously a scam –Apple would never do something like this– and the tweet should be ignored at all costs. While Twitter is deleting the offending tweets, the Bitcoin scammers appear to still have access to the accounts at the time of publication. They continue to post the tweets, so if you see it pop up again, ignore it.
There is no word at this time how the accounts were breached, whether it was individually or through a larger Twitter security vulnerability. But, considering how many accounts were accessed, it could be the latter.
Keep in mind that Apple doesn’t typically use its official Twitter account in any real capacity.