Twitter stock dives in pre-market after a widespread hack took control of major celebrities' accounts including Bill Gates, Elon Musk, and Warren Buffett

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Twitter stock dives in pre-market after a widespread hack took control of major celebrities' accounts including Bill Gates, Elon Musk, and Warren Buffett
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  • Twitter stock plummeted 7% in pre-market trading on Thursday after it was hit with a massive blue-tick hack as many verified accounts reported being unable to tweet.
  • The company said a "coordinated social engineering attack" had "successfully targeted" some employees who enabled access to hackers to its internal tools.
  • High-profile users such as Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Tesla's Elon Musk, Bill Gates, and Warren Buffett were among the targeted accounts.
  • Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.
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Twitter shares tumbled almost 7% in pre-market trading on Thursday after many accounts were compromised in a bitcoin hacking incident.

On Wednesday, the company said that hackers had targeted some of its employees which enabled access to "internal systems" and tools, leading to a massive compromise of some of the most popular accounts on its platform.

Twitter said a "coordinated social engineering attack" had "successfully targeted" some employees.

A Twitter spokesperson told Business Insider that its own "investigation continues, and we hope to have more to share there soon."

Shortly after the incident, many accounts found they were unable to tweet. Twitter's support account said that some people might be unable to tweet or change their password as the company looks into the situation.

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As of Thursday morning in Europe, normal service appears to have resumed on the site.

The incident led to high-profile accounts such as those of former president Barack Obama, Tesla CEO Elon Musk, Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, and even companies like Apple and Uber tweeting messages about Bitcoin donations.

You can see a chart of Twitter's stock so far in 2020 below:

Twitter stock dives in pre-market after a widespread hack took control of major celebrities' accounts including Bill Gates, Elon Musk, and Warren Buffett
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