Prominent figures on Twitter have become the target of a large-scale crypto scam. Over the past few weeks, eight Twitter accounts have been hacked and used to scam crypto users. For example, the accounts of DJ Steve Aioki, Peter Schiff and founder of the Pudgy Penguins NFT collection, among others, were hacked.
Large-scale Twitter hack
The hackers lured ignorant crypto fanatics into a trap with the accounts. They shared malicious links to websites where people could claim free crypto. The Twitter scam was exposed by crypto researcher ZachXBT. In total, the scammers made off with about $1 million.
Once the hackers had control of the accounts, they sent out the scam tweets. Due to the slow response time of Twitter’s security team, the tweets sometimes remained visible for hours.
“When the scammers have control over a Twitter account, they immediately post phishing messages. Slow response times from the Twitter support team meant that some of these tweets remained online for hours to days.”
Said ZachBTX. Access to the accounts was obtained through a so-called SIM swap attack. Hackers obtain a SIM card with an identical telephone number of the associated Twitter account. When a Twitter account only has an SMS verification, the hacker can easily access the account in this way. ZachBTX calls on prominent Twitter accounts not to use SMS verification.
When the scammer gains control of a Twitter account, phishing scams are tweeted out almost immediately.
Slow response times from Twitter Support have resulted in some of these tweets staying up for many hours and even days. pic.twitter.com/aslBtt8tz4
— ZachXBT (@zachxbt) June 8, 2023
Be alert for crypto scams!
While $1 million isn’t a huge amount in the world of crypto, some are victims lost everything what they had. Unfortunately, these hackers keep coming up with new and cunning ways to scam people. Therefore be very alert. In crypto land, not everything is as it seems. Always remember the rule of thumb: is something too good to be true? Then it probably isn’t true. Especially when it comes to free tokens or links that you have to click on.