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Scammers steal nearly $1M after hijacking 8+ prominent Crypto Twitter accounts

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Over the previous few weeks, scammers have hijacked over eight Twitter accounts of outstanding figures within the crypto house to advertise phishing scams. The group has stolen nearly $1 million price of crypto to this point, in accordance with blockchain sleuth ZachXBT.

In a June 9 Twitter thread, ZachXBT outlined that he had uncovered a number of “linked on chain” wallets linked to phishing scams promoted by the not too long ago hacked accounts.

“Whereas nearly all of these assaults had been the results of a SIM Swap, it appears different accounts had been doubtlessly stolen with a [Twitter admin] panel,” ZachXBT famous.

The accounts belong to figures akin to Pudgy Penguins founder Cole Villemain, DJ and NFT collector Steve Aoki and Bitcoin Journal editor Pete Rizzo.

Oddly sufficient, gold proponent and fervent crypto hater Peter Schiff additionally noticed his account hacked to advertise a doubtful hyperlink referring to tokenized gold in decentralized finance.

“I hope Twitter Security investigates every assault intently as they’ve resulted in nearly seven figures stolen,” ZachXBT mentioned, including that:

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“When the scammer positive factors management of a Twitter account, phishing scams are tweeted out nearly instantly. Gradual response occasions from Twitter Help have resulted in a few of these tweets staying up for a lot of hours and even days.”

Tweeted phishing scams. Supply: ZachXBT, Twitter

The blockchain sleuth urged individuals to make use of a safety key as an alternative of SMS-based two-factor authentication.

One other one of many account hacks highlighted by ZachXBT contains OpenAI’s chief know-how officer, Mira Murati.

Associated: Uniswap scam alert: Fraudsters impersonate executives and create fake website

On June 2, crypto group members fired off warnings about her account sharing a phishing hyperlink selling a pretend airdrop for an ERC-20 token named OPENAI.

This submit was dwell for roughly an hour, and it was considered 79,600 occasions and retweeted 83 occasions earlier than it was deleted. Notably, the scammers had restricted who might reply to the tweet to cease individuals from inserting warnings on it.

In late Might, Arthur Madrid, the co-founder and CEO of metaverse platform The Sandbox, was additionally subjected to the identical type of Twitter account hack that noticed the promotion of a fake SAND token airdrop.

It’s unclear if this specific hack is linked to the group of hackers recognized by ZachXBT, nonetheless.

Journal: $3.4B of Bitcoin in a popcorn tin — The Silk Road hacker’s story