Twitter says Bitcoin hackers only posted on a 'small subset' of accounts they targeted

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last updated 17 July 2020

Twitter is going public with a bit more information on the scope of this week's massive hack.

In its latest update on Wednesday's hack of high-profile Twitter accounts, the company says it now believes about 130 accounts were targeted "in some way" during the incident. The attackers were only able to gain control and send tweets from a "small subset" of those accounts, Twitter says, seemingly suggesting the hackers failed to gain control of the other accounts targeted.

During the incident, the accounts of former Vice President Joe Biden, former President Barack Obama, Kanye West, Elon Musk, Bill Gates, and more were compromised, tweeting out a scam that involved asking followers to send money to a Bitcoin wallet. Twitter has described this as a "coordinated social engineering attack" and said its employees who had access to "internal systems and tools" were targeted.

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Although Twitter previously said on Thursday that it doesn't have evidence passwords were accessed as part of the hack, it hasn't said whether direct messages might have been, and the company now says it's "continuing to assess whether non-public data related to these accounts was compromised." The hack has sparked an investigation from the FBI, not to mention ongoing concerns about the possibility of private information having been accessed. Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) tweeted on Thursday, "If hackers gained access to users' DMs, this breach could have a breathtaking impact for years to come."

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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.

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