Congress demands answers about massive Twitter hacking attack
The Twitter attack was part of scam involving cryptocurrency; senior correspondent Claudia Cowan reports from San Francisco.
More public figures appear to have been affected by Twitter lockouts following the widespread hack on the social media platform, including Rep. Doug Collins, R-Georgia, and Sen. Mark Warner, D-Virginia.
A source familiar with the situation told Fox News that Collins has been locked out of his official government account but still has access to his campaign account.
Later, in a statement to Fox News, Collins slammed Twitter for "failing" to protect its users from being hacked by criminals.
"No wonder users are quickly fleeing from Twitter and turning to Parler,” the Georgia congressman quipped.
DONALD TRUMP JR., JIM JORDAN LOCKED OUT OF TWITTER ACCOUNTS FOLLOWING MAJOR HACK
Warner's office confirmed to Fox News that his account also had been affected.
"Social media platforms have become central to political leaders communicating with constituents, media personalities interacting with their fans, and brands engaging with their customers," the Democratic senator told Fox News in a statement. "The ability of bad actors to take over prominent accounts, even fleetingly, signals a worrisome vulnerability in this media environment – exploitable not just for scams, but for more impactful efforts to cause confusion, havoc, and political mischief. It is absolutely essential that Twitter and law enforcement investigate this matter fully, and that all large social media platforms put greater resources and monitoring into high-risk accounts.”
Several journalists appear to have also been locked out of their Twitter accounts, including Politico reporter Lara Seligman, Daily Beast editor-at-large Molly Jong-Fast, and BuzzFeed Social Media strategist Josh Billinson.
Other accounts that have been known to be locked out include Donald Trump Jr., his spokesman Andy Surabian, Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, and the House Judiciary GOP.
"Since early evening yesterday, both Donald Trump Jr. and I have been locked out of our respective Twitter accounts. We haven't heard anything from Twitter on how/why this happened or if they plan on doing anything to rectify the situation," Surabian told Fox News.
A spokesperson for Twitter previously declined to specifically address the locked accounts but said they are "working" to provide answers.
TWITTER DETECTED 'COORDINATED SOCIAL ENGINEERING ATTACK' AFTER HIGH-PROFILE HACKS, COMPANY SAYS
On Wednesday evening, Twitter accounts belonging to former President Obama, former Vice President Joe Biden, Microsoft founder Bill Gates, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, Tesla CEO Elon Musk and rapper icon Kanye West were among those hacked to send out a bitcoin scam to their millions of followers.
As part of its investigation, Twitter locked the accounts of those affected by the hack and temporarily also shut down tweets from millions of verified accounts.
The accounts belonging to Obama, Gates, Bezos, Musk and West, as well as companies that were also hacked – like Apple and Uber – appear to remain locked pending Twitter's investigation.
Joe Biden, though, returned to Twitter on Thursday afternoon, asking his followers to "chip in" to his campaign. Journalist Jong-Fast and the House Judiciary GOP also regained access to their accounts.
Other high-profile figures who were affected by the hack include Kim Kardashian, Warren Buffet, and Michael Bloomberg.
The hackers posted tweets on accounts of politicians, celebrities, companies and others, offering to send $2,000 for every $1,000 sent to a bitcoin address.
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Twitter indicated that a "coordinated social engineering attack" was behind the widespread hack.
“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 Support wrote Wednesday night.
Fox News' Brie Stimson contributed to this report.