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.
"At this time, the accounts appear to have been compromised in order to perpetuate cryptocurrency fraud," the FBI said, per the Journal. The New York Department of Financial Services is also investigating.
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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."
