Update 3: After several hours of authenticated users being unable to tweet, the system is returning to normal, but Twitter warns that "functionality may come and go" as it works to fully resolve the issue.

Update 2: Vice reports that the culprits may have had access to Twitter's internal tools. In any case, the attack was clearly widespread and not simply a matter of personal account security.

To address the issue, Twitter has temporarily banned tweets from authenticated accounts. (This includes PC Gamer accounts.)

Update 1: President Obama has been caught.

Original Story You may have noticed on Twitter that both Bill Gates and Elon Musk were driven by the generous spirit of returning twice the amount transferred to their Bitcoin accounts earlier today. For example, if you send $1,000 to Mask's bitcoin address, he will return $2,000 to you. It's that simple! Just for the record, this is a scam.

It seemed odd at first that Gates and Musk's accounts did not have two-factor authentication enabled, but they were not the only accounts compromised: CashApp, Apple, and Uber were affected as well. Perhaps the security of individual accounts was irrelevant.

Cameron Winklevoss, who founded the Gemini cryptocurrency exchange, confirmed that his Gemini account had 2FA enabled but was compromised anyway.

It is unclear how the hack circumvented 2FA, but Will Smith, founder of Foo VR, theorized that perhaps "commonly used tools" related to analysis or scheduling could be the culprit.

Quite a few people seem to have fallen for the scam; The Verge noted that publicly available transaction records revealed dozens of payments totaling tens of thousands of dollars to hacked accounts.

Even if 2FA did not necessarily spare these accounts in this case, it is still a good idea to turn on 2FA, especially when third-party tools are involved. If you don't know how to do this, the Twitter Help Center can walk you through the process.

Twitter states on its support account that it is aware of this issue and is investigating. We will update this page as soon as we have more information.