Elon Musk, Kanye West, Apple and Bill Gates hacked by crypto scammers on Twitter

Some of the world’s richest and most powerful people have been targeted by an online hacking scam.

Elon Musk, Bill Gates and Democratic Presidential candidate Joe Biden were all hit with a similar apparent breach of security.

All of their Twitter accounts posted messages urging people to send Bitcoins – a kind of cryptocurrency – to the same address.

The address linked to the scam appears to have received more than 11.3 BTC, or roughly £82,800 so far according to Coinbase, a cryptocurrency specialist website.

Microsoft founder Bill Gate’s account posted: “Everyone is asking me to give back, and now is the time.

“I am doubling all payments sent to my BTC address for the next 30 minutes. You send $1,000, I you send you back $2,000.”