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Last week Business Insider reported that certain influential Twitter accounts were hacked.  Bill Gates, Elon Musk, former President Barack Obama, President Donald Trump, and other public figures were all compromised.

The accounts were posting tweets that appeared to promote a cryptocurrency scam. The hackers targeted high-profile accounts that had the potential to spread the scam as far as possible. 

These accounts, along with Uber, Apple, Kanye West, Kim Kardashian West, Mike Bloomberg, Warren Buffett, and Jeff Bezos all posted similar tweets asking for donations via Bitcoin to their verified profiles.

The number of prominent accounts that were impacted makes this the biggest security breach of Twitter's history.

Anatomy of a hack

It happened fast. The first public signs of the intrusion came around 3 p.m. EDT, on Wednesday, July 15.

The Twitter account for cryptocurrency exchange Binance tweeted a message saying it had partnered with “CryptoForHealth.” The tweet urged followers to give back 5000 bitcoin to the community, with a link where people could send money.

Minutes later similar tweets went out from the accounts of other cryptocurrency exchanges, as well as from Twitter accounts of famous people, huge companies, billionaires, and presidents, current and past.

"Everyone is asking me to give back, and now is the time," said a tweet that looked like it was coming from Bill Gates. There was a promise to double all payments to a Bitcoin address for the next 30 minutes.

During the hack and for 24 hours afterward the BTC wallet promoted by many of the hacked Twitter profiles processed 383 transactions and received almost 13 bitcoin, approximately $117,000.

Twitter support responded quickly to the hack

On Wednesday, as the hack was escalating, Twitter took the unprecedented step of blocking all verified accounts from tweeting as a temporary measure, while it secured its services.

It locked the affected accounts until their owners could satisfactorily identify themselves and take back control. Its data download feature was also temporarily disabled.

A little more than an hour after the attack began, Twitter apparently moved to prevent holders of verified accounts from tweeting. Users reported that non-verified accounts could still tweet.

"You may be unable to Tweet or reset your password while we review and address this incident," Twitter's support account said.

Statements from Twitter

Twitter released a statement on its platform addressing the attack. 

https://twitter.com/TwitterSupport/status/1283591846464233474