A number of verified Twitter accounts were compromised Monday - including those owned by a U.S. lawmaker, a film company, and a book publisher - all to impersonate SpaceX and Tesla founder Elon Musk.
Each of the compromised accounts engaged in a well-known crypto giveaway scam by promising to send large amounts of bitcoin to any users who sent them small amounts first.
To further reinforce the impression that the compromised accounts were genuinely owned by Musk, the hackers copied over the Tesla founder's profile picture and retweeted some of his tweets.
Some accounts also pinned the bitcoin giveaway tweet.
At first glance the Elon Musk account is convincing because it has the 'verified' blue tick.
Some retweets from the real Elon Musk account were still on the page.
The official account of English discount clothing and homeware chain Matalan was hacked to display the same fraudulent message, attracting over 700 retweets and over 3,000 likes.
The issue has become serious enough to prompt the social networking company to take action, and freeze any account that changes its display name to "Elon Musk.".
The Pallone and Matalan accounts directed users to send some portion of bitcoin to the same address, which has received 326 transactions worth a total of more than 25 bitcoin as of press time, according to data from Blockchain.com.
The Pantheon account directed users to a different address, which saw a further $12,000 in bitcoin over a two-and-a-half-hour period, while the Patheon UK account only received around $2,500.
Musk Impostors Hack Lawmaker, Publisher Accounts in New Crypto Scams
gepubliceerd op Nov 5, 2018
by Coindesk | gepubliceerd op Coinage
Coinage
Vermeld in dit artikel
Recent nieuws
Alles zien
Blockchain Bites: Bitcoin's Run, Uniswap's Hemorrhaging Value, Anchorage's Banking Bid
Bitcoin is nearing all-time highs in price and market cap last set three years ago.
Japan's megabanks to lead experiment with digital yen
We have, in order, Cheese Bank with a $3.3 million theft, Akropolis with its $2 million loss, Value DeFi with a whopping $6 million exploit and finally Origin Protocol's loss of $7 million.
Number of new Bitcoin addresses spikes amid growing FOMO
Japan's three largest banks, as part of a group of 30 private sector actors, are set to collaborate on an experiment with a digital yen.
Not just Wall Street: Quant trader explains why Bitcoin price is going up
Sam Trabucco, a quantitative trader at Alameda Research, believes four general factors are pushing up the price of Bitcoin.