Tough day for us at Twitter, Jack Dorsey after several big accounts get hacked

Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey shared a message in response to the massive hack that happened on Twitter.

Jack Dorsey responds to the Twitter hack. (REUTERS)

Twitter earlier today suffered what was the biggest hack on its platform ever. Popular verified accounts like Barack Obama, Elon Musk, Bill Gates, Joe Biden, Apple and more were hacked with tweets that were part of a bitcoin scam.

Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey responded to the hack saying that it's a “tough day” for everyone at the company.

Tough day for us at Twitter. We all feel terrible this happened.

We're diagnosing and will share everything we can when we have a more complete understanding of exactly what happened.

💙 to our teammates working hard to make this right.

— jack (@jack) July 16, 2020

The Twitter hack took place in the wee hours of the morning. The message in the bitcoin scam tweets read, “We are giving back to our community. We support Bitcoin and we believe you should too! All Bitcoin sent to our address below will be sent back to you doubled!”

According to The Verge the first bitcoin scam tweet seemed to have started from Elon Musk's Twitter account. This was later followed by Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates' Twitter account hacked.

Twitter Support acknowledged the hack around 3:00 am saying that it is investigating the issue. Since the hack caused bitcoin scam tweets to be sent out from accounts, Twitter disabled verified accounts from tweeting or even changing the password. Unverified accounts could still tweet as the hack affected only verified accounts on Twitter. Verified accounts on Twitter have the blue tick on their profiles.

We are aware of a security incident impacting accounts on Twitter. We are investigating and taking steps to fix it. We will update everyone shortly.

— Twitter Support (@TwitterSupport) July 15, 2020

An hour back Twitter Support updated that most accounts should be able to tweet again. Twitter is however still working on a fix and these functionalities may be limited again.