Scammers impersonating Elon Musk managed to hack the verified Twitter accounts of Target and several others in a cryptocurrency fraud scheme promising huge Bitcoin giveaways Tuesday morning.
Hackers were briefly able to get ahold of the Target Twitter page for about a half hour when they used the big-box retailer’s account to promote “the biggest crypto-giveaway in the world!" promising to give away nearly 5,000 Bitcoin if the victim’s first send along payments of the cryptocurrency.
"We present cryptocurrency payments for your purchases in our store, and want to celebrate this event with all users!" the scammers said on Target's Twitter account, according to screenshots taken of the rogue tweets.
Furthermore, the hackers also gained unauthorized access to several Twitter verified accounts, switched the names and profile picks to those of Elon Musk, and promoted similar scams to promote similar scams on other compromised pages and in some cases even paying Twitter to promote the fraudulent ads.
“Early this morning, our Twitter account was inappropriately accessed,” Target tweeted after regaining control of its account. “The access lasted for approx. half an hour & one fake tweet was posted during that time about a bitcoin scam. We have regained control of the account, are in close contact with Twitter & are investigating now.”
