30 Comments on “Twitter is Being Hacked and I Can’t Post to My Verified Account at the Moment Because I’m Being Told It Looks Like Suspicious Activity, I Bet I’m Not the Only One”

1. You’re not the only one. I’m seeing reports that Bill Gates, Barack Obama, Elon Musk and other luminaries were affected.

2. You’re not.

   — Twitter Exile Busiekkurt001

3. You, Bill Gates, Elon Musk, Apple …. you must be a high value target worth the trouble!

4. Another good reason to eschew social media.

5. Well, to be clear, I am not like Musk, Gates, etc in that no one thought to use my account for a Bitcoin scam. I am merely swept up in the Verified Account lockdown going on at the moment.

6. I had them suspend my account for 12 hours because I openly wished that Donald Trump would have a heart attack or stroke. Does that count?

7. Trump probably can’t tweet, either!

   Although verified users can still retweet…

8. Stephen Harris:

   Yes, that’s why I wrote that headline for this post. I retweeted my Whatever Blog account, which automatically posts whenever I put a new post here.

9. I am likewise in limbo.

10. Hmm — bet some hackers who are sick of “Blue Checks” being given a legitimacy unverified accounts don’t have decided to take matters into their own hands…
    Wonder if it was the Left or the Right?
    Or just some bitcoin miners…?

11. It doesn’t seem to have any effect on verified *promoted* accounts. Got to keep the ad revenue up.

12. Hold up a can of Goya black beans and see if you get through.

13. Even low-follower nobodies like me who managed to get verified can’t tweet right now, so it appears to be anyone with the blue check.

14. Apologies for the duplicated report, but the unverified accounts – like mine – are swept up in the same security sweep as the verified. Which is reassuring, after its fashion, I suppose.

15. you are not. and in good company…Obama, Bill Gates and more.

16. I deactivated my Twitter account last night. I guess I timed that pretty well.

17. You’re just saying that so you don’t have to pay me all those bitcoin you said you’d pay me.

18. Let us hope this is the end of the Twitter sewer for good. I am perfectly happy to visit your blog and I do not like the abusive social media model of discourse.

19. I got the following notice from the Security Service that protects my phone:

    A number of high-profile Twitter accounts were simultaneously hacked on Wednesday afternoon by attackers who used the accounts — some with millions of followers — to spread a cryptocurrency scam. High-profile accounts compromised include Apple, Elon Musk, Joe Biden, Barack Obama, Kim Kardashian West, Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, Wiz Khalifa, Warren Buffett, YouTuber MrBeast, Wendy’s, Uber, CashApp and Mike Bloomberg and this list may continue to expand. The compromised accounts posted a message promoting the address of a bitcoin wallet with the claim that the amount of any payments made to the address would be doubled and sent back — a known cryptocurrency scam technique. Twitter is looking into the matter but has not yet provided an official statement regarding this attack.

20. you have allready serender i wish it will be the and

21. Information on Ars Technica is that a system admin, with full control of the infrastructure (not a simple support tech or moderator or anything) was compromised with a social engineering attack. As a result, the hackers had full control of all of twitter’s operation and capacities, including adding/modifying tweets, account details, etc.

    All of them. Not just Trump’s or Elon’s or even our esteemed hosts’, but yours and mine.

    Beware the inevitable phishing campaigns: “Following the twitter hack, you are invited to change immediately your twitter password. Click here or it will be deactivated in 24 hours.”

22. I’m a much lower-profile blocked user :-) I’d offer to double your DogeCoins, but the machine I mined them on got disk trouble, back when DogeCoins were still worth so close to $0.0000 that you could have fun with them.
    Every few months, especially if I connect from my work VPN and report a bunch of fake users or hater accounts, Twitter sends me a nastygram saying I’ve exhibited “automated behavior”, and locks me out until either I prove I’m human providing them a phone number that matches the one I never gave them in the first place, or else until a human responds to my trouble ticket, so I’m back in Twitter Jail. (“I’m not a Robot! Really! Google Had Me Tested!”)

    I feel somewhat frustrated about it, because there are people I like to keep up with, but it also means I’m not doomscrolling all day. So hi, and lots of like-buttons to those I couldn’t deliver via Twitter.

    I’d give

23. Oops, sorry about the edit-miss at the end.

24. And yet, so far as we have been told, Donald Trump is not having a problem. Coincidence? Or grifters respecting grifters? You make the call.

25. I’ve seen a couple of reports suggesting that the Twitter employee wasn’t phished, but rather bribed; I don’t know how accurate that is, but I would be amused (and unsurprised) if it turns out to be true.

26. I think it’s a classic case of “those who can’t do (do specifically meaning win an election fairly/get and keep a job they don’t deserve and can’t …do) cheat.”

    It’d be hilarious if it weren’t so chilling and pathetic.

    Demographics we hate and want dead are mobilizing, voting and working successfully to brake SIWs’ strangleholds on various societies.

    Get thee to social media, neutralize their prominent and all who follow/agree with them and relieve them of their virtual bounty!

    It’ll be emails next. :(

27. Good thing that I changed my password and bailed for a few hours, then.

    Maybe I should change it again?

28. I got a really good phishing email once, which was indeed going to revoke an important account if I didn’t, well… do something stupid. I looked at the entire message with headers and all, and saw that it was forwarded via servers in Vietnam… imagine that!??! What a good clue.

    I still get a wide variety of “offers” from Vietnam, dunno how come I got picked out for that… while I was in the military during that war, I never went overseas, so that isn’t the problem. Also not an elected official, or really rich and powerful…

    But anyone can get caught up in the moment… I was lucky to have a sudden spark of paranoia.

29. The better phishing these days is companies outsourcing bureaucratic communications functions to other websites that outtask parts of them to other websites – Is “vouchers@mycompany.bigaccounting.dotcomishname.com” real, or fake? Too often it’s real, and it trains us to let that stuff in.

    I’ve also gotten the extortion emails – “Your Password is ____ – we caught you watching porn and we’ll send screenshots to all your friends unless you send us a Bitcoin!”
    The first one of those had my actual LinkedIn password, so probably LinkedIn got hacked.
    The latest one had “password123”, which is my typical password on a large number of news sites and other sites of low value. (Oh, noes, somebody could forge Letters To The Editor on the Fargo Daily News site! Or use up my monthly free-before-paywall article quota!)

30. Evidently the tool used by the insider at twitter allowed them to change the recovery email address for a twitter account…without sending a notification to the old email address!

    Why the heck would you allow such a thing? Let alone allow it to be used by any one employee??