Twitter Falls after Security Hack by Crypto Scammers

Twitter (NYSE:TWTR) stock fell 5.4% in the pre-market trading session today at 4:31 AM ET. The stock fell after reports of a security hack. The security break impacted Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) CEO Elon Musk, Barack Obama, Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) co-founder Bill Gates, and Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) CEO Jeff Bezos’s accounts.

More than a dozen celebrities’ Twitter accounts were simultaneously taken over and used to post a series of tweets. The tweets promised to double any payments made to a particular bitcoin address. Since then, the fake tweets have been removed. Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey said that the company will diagnose the hacking problem. Twitter will share the findings after the analysis is complete.

According to a Reuters report, Twitter said, “We detected what we believe to be a coordinated social engineering attack by people who successfully targeted some of our employees with access to internal systems and tools.” The report also said, “The hackers then used this access to take control of many highly-visible (including verified) accounts and Tweet on their behalf.”

By Wednesday evening, a combined $120,000 worth of Bitcoin transfers were made. Notably, people should never send money to someone in this manner online. Even though the information comes from a validated account, it could be a scam.

Overall, analysts’ consensus target price is $30.93, which represents a downside potential of 13.3% from Wednesday’s closing price of $35.67. Most of the analysts have stayed on the sidelines when it comes to Twitter stock. Among the 41 analysts, 17% recommend a “buy,” 71% recommend a “hold,” and 12% recommend a “sell.”

So far this week, MKM Partners raised its target price on Twitter stock from $29 to $34. Cowen and Company raised its target price from $24 to $30. J.P. Morgan also raised its target price from $29 to $33, while Jefferies raised it from $31 to $35. 

On Wednesday, Twitter stock gained 1.7% and closed at $35.67 with a market cap of $28.0 billion. The stock is trading 25.0% below its 52-week high of $45.86 and 71.9% above its 52-week low of $20.00. Twitter stock has risen by 7.3% year-to-date.

Based on the last closing price, the stock was trading 8.6% above its 20-day moving average of $32.85. The stock is also trading 10.6% above its 50-day moving average of $32.26 and 17.5% above its 100-day moving average of $30.35.

Twitter stock has a lower Bollinger Band level of $28.76, while its middle Bollinger Band level is $32.85. On Wednesday, the stock closed near its upper Bollinger Band level of $36.94, which indicates that it’s overbought.

Wall Street analysts expect Twitter to report sales of $700.8 million in the second quarter—a reduction of 16.7% YoY (year-over-year) compared to $841.38 million in the same quarter last year. Meanwhile, analysts expect the technology company to report an adjusted EPS of -$0.01 in the second quarter compared to $1.58 in the second quarter of 2019.

Read 2 Must-Knows before Investors Buy Twitter Stock and Will Audio Tweet Feature Be a Game-Changer for Twitter? to learn more.