Twitter Hack: Elon Musk and Kim Kardashian targeted in huge cyber attack

Some of the world's richest and most recognisable people and organisations have been hacked on Twitter.

In a seemingly well-organised cyber-attack, hackers took control of the accounts and posted asking people to give them money or Bitcoin, and suggesting they would get more back in return because the celebrities were feeling "greatful".

The tweets were deleted just minutes after they were first posted, but hundreds of people still sent money.

BBC Own It: Think before you click

"This appears to be the worst hack of a major social media platform yet." said Dmitri Alperovitch, a cyber-security expert.

Rapper Kanye West and his wife Kim Kardashian were targeted by the group. As were billionaires like Elon Musk, who founded Space X and Tesla, Microsoft founder Bill Gates and Amazon owner Jeff Bezos.

Several politicians' official accounts were targeted too. Former US president Barak Obama, and Joe Biden, who is currently campaigning to take over from Donald Trump as the next president, were targeted.

Tech giants Apple were also targeted by the hacking group, as were Uber.

Between them they have around 300 millions followers on Twitter, meaning the hackers would have had access to lots of people to target with their scam.

Tech billionaire Elon Musk was the first to be targeted by the hackers.

In a post on his account, he appeared to offer to double people's digital money, for 30 minutes only.

The tweets were deleted just a few minutes later, but then the same tweets started appearing on lots of other big accounts.

Twitter took swift and extreme action by preventing many people with a blue 'official' verification tick from tweeting, and stopping some functions on their accounts.

This is the first time in Twitter's history that it has had to do that.

Twitter has launched an investigation to find out how the attack happened.

So far they've revealed it was a "co-ordinated" cyber-attack "with access to internal systems and tools".

Which suggests that the hackers were somehow able to gain the same access rights as a person who works at Twitter - making it easier for them to access people's accounts.

"We know they [the hackers] used this access to take control of many highly-visible (including verified) accounts and Tweet on their behalf,".

Jack Dorsey, who is the CEO of Twitter said: "Tough day for us at Twitter. We all feel terrible this happened."

"We're diagnosing and will share everything we can when we have a more complete understanding of exactly what happened. "

Twitter have also said: "Most accounts should be able to Tweet again. As we continue working on a fix, this functionality may come and go. We're working to get things back to normal as quickly as possible."

The identity of the hackers hasn't been discovered yet.

However, some of the hacked tweets were directing people to a website registered by a cyber-attacker.

An Instagram account which used the same name as the website has also been found.

The profile description on the Instagram account read: "It was us", with a smirking emoji.

The Instagram profile also posted a message that said: "It was a charity attack. Your money will find its way to the right place."

The FBI in San Francisco have publicly condemned the hacking, saying: "We advise the public not to fall victim to this scam by sending cryptocurrency or money in relation to this incident."