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DESCRIPTION OF EVENTS

"Target Corporation (doing business as Target and stylized as target), is an American big box department store chain headquartered in Minneapolis, Minnesota. It is the eighth largest retailer in the United States, and a component of the S&P 500 Index. Target established itself as the discount division of the Dayton's Company of Minneapolis in 1962. It began expanding the store nationwide in the 1980s (as part of the Dayton-Hudson Corporation), and introduced new store formats under the Target brand in the 1990s. The company has found success as a cheap-chic player in the industry. The parent company was renamed Target Corporation in 2000, and divested itself of its last department store chains in 2004. It suffered from a massive, highly publicized security breach of customer credit card data and the failure of its short-lived Target Canada subsidiary in the early 2010s, but experienced revitalized success with its expansion in urban markets within the United States."

"Twitter cryptocurrency scammers have claimed their largest prey ever: hackers briefly hijacked the official account of American retail behemoth Target to push malicious Bitcoin giveaway links to its almost two million followers." "Indeed, the company confirmed a tweet linking to a malicious Bitcoin giveaway remained on its feed for approximately half an hour."

"The tweet, which has since fortunately been deleted, encouraged users to send a small sum of cryptocurrency for a chance to enter a massive $30 million Bitcoin giveaway (5,000 BTC)."

"As it always goes, instead of giving away cryptocurrency, the scammers merely leave naive investors with empty pockets."

"The address used in the Target hack was also used in an attack earlier this week on Elon Musk."

"It remains unclear how successful the attack was, but the Bitcoin address associated with the malicious giveaway links has received only a handful of small transactions today." "Altogether, the Musk/Target scammers scooped 5.86 BTC, amounting to $32,700 as of yesterday’s exchange rate. Yesterday afternoon, the crooks began cashing out, sending money from the scam Bitcoin address to others."

"Update 16:12 UTC: Target has since confirmed the hacking incident in an email to Hard Fork. See its full response here."

“Early this morning, Target’s Twitter account was inappropriately accessed” a company spokesperson told Hard Fork in an email. “The access lasted for approximately half an hour and one fake tweet was posted during that time about a Bitcoin scam.”

"Early this morning, our Twitter account was inappropriately accessed. The access lasted for approx. half an hour & one fake tweet was posted during that time about a bitcoin scam. We have regained control of the account, are in close contact with Twitter & are investigating now."

"“We’re in close contact with Twitter, have deleted the tweet and have locked the account while we investigate further,” the retail giant further told Hard Fork. "Unfortunately, the origin of the breach remains unclear."

In a highly publicized case, the Twitter account of Target Corporation was taken over by hackers, who promptly posted a fake bitcoin giveaway scheme offering millions in prizes. The tweet remained online for roughly 30 minutes before it was taken offline. Up to 5.86 bitcoin ($33k USD) may have been taken during this incident. No funds were recovered.

Official Google Twitter account hacked in Bitcoin scam – Naked Security (Mar 8)
Google's G Suite account on Twitter hacked to promote Bitcoin scam - Neowin (Mar 8)
G Suite Twitter hacked for Bitcoin scam - 9to5Google (Mar 8)
Google's G Suite Twitter Account Hacked, Promotes Bitcoin Giveaway Scam (Mar 8)
@Target Twitter (Mar 8)
Google’s G Suite Twitter account is the latest to get hacked in bitcoin scam - The Verge (Mar 8)
Google account hacked to promote Bitcoin scam on Twitter (Mar 8)
Retail giant Target hacked to promote a Bitcoin scam on Twitter (Mar 15)
Target confirms its Twitter was hacked to promote a Bitcoin scam (Mar 15)
Target Corporation - Wikipedia (Mar 15)

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