Twitter says it has 'no evidence' Bitcoin hackers accessed passwords as FBI investigates incident

The FBI is now getting involved in probing this week's massive Twitter hack.

A wide variety of high-profile Twitter accounts, including that of former Vice President Joe Biden and former President Barack Obama, were breached on Wednesday in what Twitter called a "coordinated social engineering attack," during which messages were posted on their accounts as part of a Bitcoin scam. The FBI has opened an investigation into the incident, The Wall Street Journal and Reuters reported on Thursday.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE
https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/flexiimages/jacafc5zvs1692883516.jpg

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

Twitter on Thursday provided an update on its investigation, saying "we have no evidence that attackers accessed passwords." TechCrunch notes, though, that a major open question remains whether direct messages were accessed. Twitter's update on Thursday didn't mention that, and asked this question by TechCrunch, a Twitter spokesperson reportedly declined to comment.

Meanwhile, reports emerged on Thursday that a number of users haven't regained access to their accounts since they were locked during the hack, including Donald Trump Jr. and Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio). Twitter said it locked "any accounts that had attempted to change the account's password during the past 30 days" during the incident and is now "working to help people regain access to their accounts ASAP if they were proactively locked." But Twitter warned that since it's "taking extra steps to confirm that we’re granting access to the rightful owner," this "may take additional time."

Explore More
Brendan Morrow

Brendan worked as a culture writer at The Week from 2018 to 2023, covering the entertainment industry, including film reviews, television recaps, awards season, the box office, major movie franchises and Hollywood gossip. He has written about film and television for outlets including Bloody Disgusting, Showbiz Cheat Sheet, Heavy and The Celebrity Cafe.