Twitter says the group behind the âCrypto for Healthâ hack earlier this week had targeted more than 130 accounts.
The social media platform said in a thread Friday morning the hackers, who are yet to be identified, gained full control of a "small subset" of accounts, using them to send tweets asking for bitcoin.
These included verified accounts for mainstream figures including former President Barack Obama and Tesla's Elon Musk; crypto personalities Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao and Justin Sun; and companies, including the Coinbase exchange and CoinDesk.
Users sent more than $125,000 worth of bitcoin by the time Twitter got a handle of the situation and locked down verified accounts.
Twitter is investigating whether the hacking group accessed non-public data.
One former employee told The Financial Timesthe company had lax security protocols, giving full administrative control to hundreds of engineers.
Hackers hijacked Twitter twice in 2009; at the time, the Federal Trade Commission criticized the company for "serious lapses in data security."
Some U.S. lawmakers have been airing their concerns over the latest breach, citing the damage that might have occurred if President Trump's account had been hacked.
