Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey Laments “Tough Day” After Hack Attack On Joe Biden, Kanye West, Barack Obama, Elon Musk & More

Dominic Patten
·3 min read

Click here to read the full article.

When the feeds of some of the most high-profile people in the world are hacked, your internal systems are undermined and your stock takes a 4% drop, “tough day” may be a severe understatement.

Yet, that is what Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey said today after Joe Biden, Kanye West, Elon Musk, Barack Obama, Amazon kingpin Jeff Bezos, ex-NYC Mayor Mike Bloomberg and Bill Gates plus the corporate feeds of Apple and saw their accounts taken over for a spell on Wednesday by a Bitcoin scam.

More from Deadline

On what could be called the worst day for the platform, it also can’t escape anyone’s notice that almost all of those targeted in this clearly coordinated cyberattack were one way or another not exactly the biggest supporters of Donald Trump – and ended up with almost as much digital egg on their face as Twitter itself. While not chump change, the around $300,000 haul that the perpetrators snagged using some very very VIP feeds almost indicates that money wasn’t the real aim here.

“This was about testing Twitter’s security and protocols,” a tech insider told Deadline tonight. “More like a Phase 1 than a hit and run,” he added. The San Francisco office of the FBI would neither confirm nor deny that they were investigating the hack. But law enforcement sources say the Bureau is looking into what went down today at Twitter, who have their HQ in the Bay Area metropolis.

The blue badged targets are certainly blue chip enough to warrant the FBI getting involved.

Obviously, currently poll topping ex-Veep Biden is the Democrats’ presumptive nominee to take on the former Celebrity Apprentice host in November, and Bezos owns the Washington Post, which was been a thorn in Trump’s paw, to name a couple of examples. Having formally filed with the FEC yesterday for Kanye2020, former MAGA fan West is now seemingly really running for POTUS too, with Musk as a big backer.

While not the first time something like this has happened on a smaller scale before, Twitter continue to say they are probing into what happen to compromise the company earlier today:

However, as the cause of the breach remain unexplained at this point, the tech insider tells Deadline that most likely an administrative tool was compromised, allowing the hack. “Whoever did this was in the house, cruising around and not too shy about it,” the insider asserted.

In that vein, most of the social media platform’s functions are alive and kicking again, even for the verified crowd – for now.

Best of Deadline

Sign up for Deadline's Newsletter. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.