FBI investigating Twitter breach

Hackers broke into several high-profile Twitter accounts this week, ranging from politicians like former President Barack Obama and presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden to tech gurus like Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, and Tesla CEO Elon Musk. The FBI said it is investigating what experts call one of the worst attacks in recent years.

What did the hackers do? The accounts “appear to have been compromised in order to perpetuate cryptocurrency fraud,” according to the FBI. The hackers tweeted out over the accounts an offer to send $2,000 for every $1,000 sent to an anonymous Bitcoin address. Twitter quickly deleted the fake tweets and locked down the accounts. The social media platform said the attackers used “social engineering” on Twitter employees to gain access, suggesting the hackers tricked them into downloading malicious software or offered to trade something for information.

Dig deeper: Read Steve West’s report in Liberties about the debate over who should regulate online speech.