Twitter shares drop after high-profile massive hack

New York: Shares of Twitter dropped on Thursday, a day after hackers gained access to the social media company's internal systems to hijack accounts of several politicians, billionaires, celebrities and companies.

Hackers infiltrated the twitter handles of U.S. presidential candidate Joe Biden, reality TV star Kim Kardashian, former U.S. President Barack Obama and billionaire Elon Musk to solicit digital currency - raising major concerns about security on the widely-used platform.

"It is really indicative of the dangers we face, especially in a work from home environment, where someone can use our access, because we made a mistake, clicked on a wrong link, opened a wrong attachment, maybe answered the phone and gave way to too much information, overshared on social media," Adam Levin, founder of cyber security firm, CyberScout, told." And, as a result of that, we not only have made our company vulnerable, but we've made customers of our company vulnerable."

Twitter said hackers 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."

In an extraordinary step, Twitter temporarily prevented many verified accounts from publishing messages as it investigated the breach.

Twitter Chief Executive Officer Jack Dorsey said in a tweet on Wednesday that it was a "tough day" for everyone at Twitter and pledged to share "everything we can when we have a more complete understanding of exactly what happened." 
New York Governor, Andrew Cuomo, issued a statement saying that he is "directing a full investigation into this massive hack."

Other high profile accounts that were hacked included rapper Kanye West, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, investor Warren Buffett, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, and the corporate accounts for Uber and Apple Several accounts of cryptocurrency-focused organizations were also hijacked.

Publicly available blockchain records show that the apparent scammers received more than $100,000 worth of cryptocurrency.