Twitter, on Thursday, July 16, confirmed that hackers targeted about 130 accounts during the cyber attack this week, including profiles of top American billionaires. 

The cyberattack compromised the accounts of many prominent US personaliities and organizations on Wednesday, July 15, 2020. 

The cyber-criminals hacked into accounts belonging to Microsoft Corp co-founder, Bill Gates, U.S. presidential candidate, Joe Biden, CEO Amazon, Jeff Bezos, reality TV star, Kim Kardashian West, former U.S. President, Barack Obama and billionaire Elon Musk, and posted tweets soliciting donations via Bitcoin, Eons Intelligence reports.

Other accounts hacked were those belonging to Rapper Kanye West, business tycoon and world fourth wealthiest person, Warren Buffet, majority owner and co-founder of Bloomberg L.P, Mike Bloomberg, and the corporate accounts for Uber Technologies Inc and Apple Inc.

The giant social media app, in its latest statement, said that the hackers were able to assess a ‘small subset’ of the targeted accounts and send tweets from them.

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It added that it was continuing to assess whether the attackers were able to access private data of the targeted accounts.

Twitter noted that the hackers had targeted employees with access to its internal systems and ‘used this access to take control of many highly-visible (including verified) accounts and Tweet on their behalf"

“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,” twitter said.

It reiterated that it was working with impacted account owners.

“We’re working with impacted account owners and will continue to do so over the next several days. We are continuing to assess whether non-public data related to these accounts was compromised, and will provide updates if we determine that occurred.”

As investigations gain momentum, the FBI’s San Francisco office, on Thursday, said it had launched an investigation after hackers accessed Twitter's internal systems to hijack accounts of the high-profile people.

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The FBI, in a statement, said "At this time, the accounts appear to have been compromised in order to perpetuate cryptocurrency fraud, we advise the public not to fall victim to this scam by sending cryptocurrency or money in relation to this incident. As this investigation is ongoing, we will not be making further comment at this time."

The law enforcement agency said that cyber attackers committed cryptocurrency fraud in the incident.

Publicly available blockchain records show the apparent scammers received more than $100,000 worth of cryptocurrency, according to FBI

Amongst those worried about the social impersonation on the personalities’ profiles is US Senator, Ed Markey, who lamented that the attack might be used in the future to spread false information as the US election approaches.

"While this scheme appears financially motivated...imagine if these bad actors had a different intent to use powerful voices to spread disinformation to potentially interfere with our elections, disrupt the stock market, or upset our international relations," the legislator said.