Politics
Trump’s Account Secure During Twitter Security Breach: White House
U.S. President Donald Trump's Twitter account was secure when a number of high-profile accounts on the social media platform were hacked Wednesday, White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany said.
Trump's account was “not jeopardized during these attacks,” she said at a press conference Thursday, adding the president “will remain on Twitter.”
The White House has been in “constant contact” with Twitter Inc. to keep the president's feed safe, McEnany said.
Democratic presidential candidate and former Vice President Joe Biden, former President Barack Obama and tech billionaire Elon Musk were among those who saw their accounts hacked by suspected cryptocurrency scammers, raising concerns over the social media platform's security ahead of the November presidential election.
The hacked accounts sent messages soliciting people to send Bitcoin, a well-known cryptoasset, to a certain address, promising to double the payments.
McEnany says President Trump's account was "secure and not jeopardized" during the hacking of prominent Twitter accounts on Wednesday https://t.co/Nj065CIsxp pic.twitter.com/DryeKpwNQv
— CBS News (@CBSNews) July 16, 2020
Twitter has said it detected what the company believes to be “a coordinated social engineering attack by people who successfully targeted some of our employees with access to internal systems and tools.”
“We know they used this access to take control of many highly-visible (including verified) accounts and Tweet on their behalf,” the company said.
Accounts that were reportedly compromised included those of Microsoft Corp. cofounder Bill Gates, Amazon.com Inc. founder and CEO Jeff Bezos, former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, as well as corporate accounts for Uber Technologies Inc. and Apple Inc.
U.S. media reported that the apparent scammers may have received more than $100,000 worth of cryptocurrency.
The 74-year-old Trump, a businessman and TV personality before becoming president, has preferred Twitter as a means of communicating with the populace, dismissing mainstream news media as “fake news.” He has more than 80 million followers on the platform.
==Kyodo
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