The Twitter hacking scam has already led to people (unnecessarily) exaggerating its effects. Doctored photos are adding to a chaotic situation.
Wednesday afternoon a tweet was posted from Elon Musk’s Twitter account saying the billionaire Tesla CEO would double any Bitcoin donations made to a specified address as a goodwill gesture during the coronavirus pandemic. The tweet was fake, which was first evidenced by the message being abruptly deleted, and then by the fact that hundreds of other Twitter accounts suddenly posted similar messages, asking that money be sent to the same Bitcoin address. Those accounts included literally some of the world’s most famous people, like Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Kanye West, Bill Gates, and more.
The madness of this sequence of events is leading some to hyperbole though, as Twitter users comment about the profits these hackers have made. In response to a now-deleted tweet about this being the “cyber heist of the decade”, a commenter posted a screenshot showing thousands of transactions made as part of the scam, for a Bitcoin value of more than $7 million. However, cryptocurrency exchange service Blockchain, which is even depicted in the supposedly-doctored image, debunks that information. While $60,000 and over 300 donations in just a few hours is a lot of money to earn from a scam, it’s nothing like multiple millions. It’s also still impossible to know if these are legitimate donations.
Why Twitter Users Are Lying about The Hack
The account which posted the false numbers has fewer than 100 followers and doesn’t appear to be associated with Twitter or Blockchain in any professional capacity. Based on that and the user posting other messages about the hack in batches since the story began, this appears to be a classic case of sensationalism. The poster would go on to add the same message in reply to the now-deleted hacked tweets from many of the other accounts involved. So, take this as yet another example of why we can’t trust everything we see on social media. At the same time, there’s enough unbelievable news coming out of this story to make everything seem real. Since the public realized the tweets were fake other people have continued to donate to the Bitcoin account, driving up its balance by over $10,000 in the past hour.
Source: Blockchain