Elon Musk personally called Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey after realizing his account had been hacked

Elon Musk's Twitter account was hacked alongside dozens of celebrity accounts earlier in July.
The Tesla CEO told The New York Times he became aware of the hack within minutes because friends texted him. He directly rang Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey to alert him.
"Probably within less than five minutes my account was locked," Musk said.
Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

When Elon Musk's Twitter account was hacked as part of a coordinated attack on dozens of high-profile accounts on July 15, the Tesla billionaire hotlined it straight to Twitter's CEO.

The attack was highly visible as accounts belonging to dozens of celebrities and public figures including Elon Musk, Barack Obama, Joe Biden, and Kim Kardashian started tweeting links to a bitcoin scam, promising followers that if they sent money to a bitcoin wallet the celebrity in question would send back double the amount.

In an interview with The New York Times published Saturday, Elon Musk — himself a prolific Twitter user with roughly 37 million followers — described how he learned about the hack and said immediately rang Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey.

Musk said he rang Dorsey as soon as his account tweeted out the bitcoin scam.

"Within a few minutes of the post coming up, I immediately got texts from a bunch of people I know, then I immediately called Jack [Dorsey] so probably within less than five minutes my account was locked," he said.

Musk also told The Times he was unwell when the hack occurred.

"I think I had food poisoning or something, so you throw up incredibly violently with food poisoning. So I was kind of ill during a lot of it, the Twitter takeover. But I think it's good anyway to take a few breaks from Twitter and not be on there 24 hours a day. Twitter can mess with your mind," he said.

Since the hack occurred Twitter has determined the hackers were able to view the private direct messages of 36 out of the total 130 accounts which were affected during the breach.

When asked by the Times whether he was worried whether the hackers could have seen his private Twitter messages, Musk seemed unperturbed.

"I'm not that concerned about my DMs being made public. I mean, we can probably cherry-pick some section of my DMs that sound bad out of context but overall my DMs mostly consist of swapping memes," said Musk.

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: Why Pikes Peak is the most dangerous racetrack in America