Chaos erupts on Twitter after hackers target the likes of Obama and Elon Musk as part of a scam

Chaos exploded on Twitter on Wednesday evening when hackers targetted high profile accounts on the website as part of a Bitcoin scam.

Individuals such as Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Bill Gates, Elon Musk, Kanye West and Jeff Bezos all found themselves targetted by a scam that encouraged people to donate money to a suspicious website, which they would then double. Companies like Apple and Uber also fell victim to the hackers.

Although many tweets were quickly deleted, some reports indicate that the scammers managed to obtain more than $100,000 in a short space of time before Twitter really began to crack down on the hackers.

Cameron Winklevoss, the world's first Bitcoin billionaire, also warned people to be vigilant and that it was a scam.

Twitter's solution to the problem, which now appears to have been resolved was to temporarily prevent all blue tick verified accounts from tweeting. In a statement the social media giant said:

We are aware of a security incident impacting accounts on Twitter. We are investigating and taking steps to fix it. We will update everyone shortly. You may be unable to Tweet or reset your password while we review and address this incident.

This temporary lockdown on Twitter, lead to a strange few hours on the website where verified accounts couldn't tweet anything, creating an almost utopian state of mind, where smaller accounts could finally make their voices heard. Of course, Twitter being Twitter they used this moment to mock the verified accounts, with some users being forced to tweet from alternative accounts.

Once the blue ticks privileges were restored, some accounts decided to have a bit of fun at their own expense.

Some also used the opportunity to mock the word on the scam and have some fun of their own.

The website that people were being told to send money to now displays a phishing attack warning telling people to not donate to it. Meanwhile, Twitter appears to have fixed the problem but are still limiting usage for some accounts as their investigation continues.