In the last weeks, Scammers have hijacked more than eight Twitter accounts of prominent personalities in the crypto space to promote phishing scams. The group has so far stolen almost $1 million worth of cryptocurrency, according to blockchain detective ZachXBT.
In a June 9 Twitter thread, ZachXBT noted that it had discovered several “linked on chain” wallets connected to phishing scams promoted by the recently hacked accounts..
“Yes ok most of these attacks were the result of a SIM Swap or SIM exchangeit seems that other accounts were potentially stolen with a panel [de administración de Twitter]”noted ZachXBT.
Over the past few weeks we have seen 8+ account takeovers connected to the same group of scammers as evident by how their addresses are linked on-chain.
I hope @TwitterSafety Investigates each attack closely as they have resulted in almost seven figures stolen. @miramurati… pic.twitter.com/ypnqyb5oNy
— ZachXBT (@zachxbt) June 8, 2023
In the last few weeks we have seen more than 8 account takeovers involving the same set of scammers, as evidenced by the way their addresses are linked on-chain.
I hope @TwitterSafety investigates each attack closely as they have resulted in almost seven figures being stolen.
The accounts belong to the likes of Pudgy Penguins founder Cole Villemain, DJ and NFT collector Steve Aoki, and Bitcoin Magazine editor Pete Rizzo.
Curiously, Gold advocate and ardent crypto hater Peter Schiff’s account was also hacked to promote a dubious link related to tokenized gold in decentralized finance.
“I hope Twitter Safety investigates each attack closely as they have resulted in nearly seven figures being stolen.ZachXBT said, adding that:
“When scammers gain control of a Twitter account, phishing scams are tweeted almost immediately. Slow response from Twitter helpdesk has caused some of these tweets to stay posted for many hours and even days.”
The blockchain detective urged people to use a security key instead of SMS-based two-factor authentication.
Another of the account hacks highlighted by ZachXBT includes OpenAI CTO Mira Murati..
On June 2, some members of the cryptocurrency community released warnings about his account by sharing a phishing link promoting a fake airdrop for an ERC-20 token called OPENAI.
This post was active for about an hour, was viewed 79,600 times and retweeted 83 times before being removed.. Notably, the scammers had restricted the ability to reply to the tweet to prevent people from putting warnings on it.
At the end of May, Arthur Madrid, co-founder and CEO of metaverse platform The Sandbox, was also the target of the same type of Twitter account hack.promoting a fake airdrop of SAND tokens.
However, it is not clear if this particular hack is related to the hacking group identified by ZachXBT.
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