President Donald Trump will remain on Twitter, White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany said Thursday, a day after a massive hacking attack hit the platform, compromising the accounts of several prominent figures and companies.
Former President Barack Obama and former Vice President Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic nominee for president, were among the targets of the hack. The accounts of Tesla’s Elon Musk, Microsoft’s Bill Gates and Amazon’s Jeff Bezos were also affected; as were the accounts of Kanye West, Michael Bloomberg, Warren Buffett, Apple, Uber and others.
The accounts posted messages asking followers to send money in bitcoin to anonymous cryptocurrency addresses. The messages promised senders that their money would be doubled and returned.
Twitter later said the hack appeared to have been a “coordinated social engineering attack by people who successfully targeted some of our employees with access to internal systems and tools.”
The FBI said on Thursday that it was investigating the attack.
The large-scale hack has heightened concerns among cybersecurity experts about how easily social media platforms like Twitter can be manipulated ― and potentially used for nefarious purposes during elections, including the presidential vote in November.
Despite these concerns, the White House said Trump ― whose account did not appear to have been compromised in Wednesday’s attack ― would continue to use Twitter.
McEnany told reporters that Dan Scavino, director of social media at the White House, had been in “constant contact” with Twitter as the attack was unfolding to ensure that Trump’s account wasn’t affected.