Twitter says about 130 accounts were targeted in cyber attack this week

Twitter Inc said late on Thursday that hackers targeted about 130 accounts during the cyber attack this week, an incident in which profiles of many prominent personalities and organizations were compromised.

Twitter said that the hackers were able to gain control of a small number of accounts and send tweets from them.

The company added that it was continuing to assess whether hackers were able to access private data of the targeted accounts.

Accounts of celebrities and political figures including Joe Biden, Kim Kardashian, Barack Obama and Elon Musk were hacked during the cyber attack on Wednesday.

Twitter reiterated that it was working with impacted account owners.

The FBI's San Francisco division is leading an inquiry into the Twitter hacking, it said in a statement on Thursday, as more Washington lawmakers called for an accounting of how it happened.

The high-profile accounts that were hacked also included rapper Kanye West, Amazon.com Inc founder Jeff Bezos, investor Warren Buffett, Microsoft Corp co-founder Bill Gates, and the corporate accounts for Uber Technologies Inc and Apple Inc.