Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey. Photo credit: Ryan Lash / TED, under Creative Commons license

A massive crypto scam particularly targeting accounts of influential people on Twitter has occurred. Twitter accounts belong to prominent personalities appear to have been compromised to promote a cryptocurrency scam encouraging users to send Bitcoins to a certain address in hopes of their money being doubled. Compromised accounts include those of; Tesla CEO Elon Musk, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, rappers Kayne West and Wiz Khalifa, Michael Bloomberg, politicians Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Benjamin Netanyahu, and brand accounts belonging to Apple, Uber, Coinbase, and Gemini. It’s unclear how such a widespread compromise appears to have been carried out.

In response to the compromise, Twitter appears to have blocked all verified accounts from sending out tweets.