Official Google twitter account hacked by cryptocurrency scammers

An official, verified Twitter account for Google's G Suite was hacked by scammers seeking to bilk innocent people out of their bitcoin

An official, verified Twitter account for Google's G Suite was hacked by scammers seeking to bilk innocent people out of their bitcoin — making it the latest victim in a scourge that the social network can't quite stamp out.

Sent Tuesday afternoon, a tweet from the G Suite account shared information about the "biggest crypto-giveaway in the world," which followers could access by first sending over some bitcoin of their own. The tweet was spotted by Twitter users who managed to grab screenshots of the post before it was deleted.

Verified accounts across Twitter have recently fallen victim to this kind of widespread hacking effort. Needless to say, the cryptocurrency giveaway to which it makes reference doesn't exist — it's a ploy to get cryptocurrency.

These accounts, some of which are edited to impersonate Tesla CEO Elon Musk, share tweets that peddle a fake cryptocurrency giveaway and attempt to scam Twitter users into sending bitcoin via a sketchy URL. Some posts, as in the case of the G Suite tweet, were even successfully "promoted" through Twitter's ad service to appear higher up in followers' feeds.