Twitter has responded to the hacking of a number of high profile accounts, saying that employees of the social media firm who had access to internal systems were targeted.
A number of accounts, belonging to the likes of Bill Gates, Barack Obama and Kanye West, had to be suspended after a Bitcoin scam was posted on their feed.
From its official support channel, Twitter posted a series of tweets explaining the hack, confirming theories that the attack couldn't have taken place without access to the company's internal tools and employee privileges.
The first tweet in the thread reads: "We detected what we believe to be a coordinated social engineering attack by people who successfully targeted some of our employees with access to internal systems and tools.
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"We know they used this access to take control of many highly-visible (including verified) accounts and Tweet on their behalf."
Twitter acknowledges that numerous hackers seem to have been involved, not simply an individual. It also says that more than one employee's account was compromised.
Explaining its step to reduce functionality for all verified accounts, Twitter said: "This was disruptive, but it was an important step to reduce risk. Most functionality has been restored but we may take further actions and will update you if we do.
"We have locked accounts that were compromised and will restore access to the original account owner only when we are certain we can do so securely."
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Twitter added that it has taken steps internally to 'limit access to internal systems and tools while our investigation is ongoing'.
The hack happened overnight, with the breach affecting the likes of Tesla founder Elon Musk, rapper Kanye West, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, and big companies like Apple and Uber.
The scam appeared to essentially con people into sending Bitcoin to the registered account promoted in the tweet, with the celebrities and companies promising to double it.
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Musk's Twitter account was hacked several times, with one tweet saying: "I am giving back to my community due to Covid-19! All Bitcoin sent to my address below will be sent back doubled. If you send $1,000, I will send back $2,000! Only doing this for the next 30 minutes! Enjoy."
The wording has appeared in similar formats across the affected accounts.
According to Blockchain.com, the Bitcoin account used in some of the tweets has received more than USD$100,000.
Featured Image Credit: PA