Twitter explains how hackers accessed accounts of Obama, Elon Musk, Joe Biden, others in digital currency scam

Late on Wednesday, microblogging site Twitter explained how hackers, who targeted top-profile men, gained access to impersonate these account holders in a digital currency scam.

A list of these men targeted by the alleged hackers included former US president Barack Obama, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, Microsoft founder Bill Gates, presidential aspirant Joe Biden, tech billionaire and Tesla CEO Elon Musk amongst others.

Explaining insights into the cyber hack, Twitter via its verified handle confirmed the incident, noting that the malicious act was perpetrated through entry operations targeting some of its employees.

Read also: PROPAGANDA: Twitter suspends 170,000 ‘China-backed accounts’

While Twitter said it has commenced investigation to reveal the notorious faces behind the July 15 digital scam, telling followers to send bitcoin to a specific address, there are speculations from the public linking the web invasion to President Donald Trump, whose account was not hacked.

Twitter has, since Wednesday, apologised, acknowledging the role of its employees in the unfortunate event.

Twitter said: “We detected what we believe to be a coordinated social engineering attack by people who successfully targeted some of our employees with access to internal systems and tools.

“We know they used this access to take control of many highly-visible (including verified) accounts and Tweet on their behalf,” the microblogging site explained.

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