Notable Twitter Accounts hijacked in a recent scam.
Recently, a group of scammers targeted prominent figures in the crypto space, hijacking over eight Twitter accounts and stealing nearly $1 million worth of cryptocurrency. Moreover, blockchain sleuth ZachXBT has uncovered wallets linked to phishing scams promoted through these hacked accounts.
Prominent Twitter Accounts Hijacked
ZachXB reported this on his Twitter page. He said that the scammers have successfully hijacked several Twitter accounts, including those of notable individuals in the crypto industry.
Among the victims are Cole Villemain, the founder of Pudgy Penguins; Steve Aoki, a DJ and NFT collector; Pete Rizzo, the editor of Bitcoin Magazine; and even the well-known crypto critic Peter Schiff.
Further, ZachXBT suspects that in addition to SIM swapping, the scammers may have stolen other accounts using a Twitter admin panel. Once the scammers gained control of an account, they promptly promoted phishing scams.
Unfortunately, slow response times from Twitter Support have allowed these fraudulent tweets to remain active for extended periods. This enabled the scammers to steal significant sums of money.
ZachXBT’s Warnings and Recommendations
ZachXBT has called on Twitter Safety to thoroughly investigate each attack, emphasizing the substantial financial losses resulting from these hijackings.
In response to this growing threat, he encourages users to enhance their security measures by employing security keys. He further added that they should not rely solely on SMS-based two-factor authentication.
Hijacked Accounts in Focus
One notable hijacked account is that of Mira Murati, the CTO of OpenAI. On June 2, her account shared a phishing link promoting a fraudulent airdrop for an ERC-20 token named OPENAI. Even though the tweet had a relatively short lifespan of one hour, it managed to generate substantial interest. This captured the attention of 79,600 viewers and received 83 retweets.
Additionally, the scammers deliberately restricted replies to prevent people from posting warnings.
In a similar fashion, Arthur Madrid, the co-founder and CEO of The Sandbox, fell victim to a Twitter account hack promoting a fake SAND airdrop.
While it is uncertain whether this specific incident is linked to the same group of hackers identified by ZachXBT, it highlights the pervasive nature of these attacks within the crypto community.
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