Scammers Steal £137,000 in Crypto Hacking, Posed As Verified Twitter Accounts

Scammers in the UK were able to make off with £120,000 in Bitcoin after posing as the verified Twitter accounts of two well-known British companies, according to a report by the Telegraph.

Attack of the Fake ElonThe hackers pirated the verified accounts of clothing store Matalan and film company Pathé UK, then claimed to be Elon Musk and promoted a phony giveaway via the social media accounts.

The two accounts had a total combined following of around 100,000.

Once hacked, the accounts' photos and names were changed to match Elon Musk's official verified account, and the deception was aided by the fact that the accounts kept their blue verification check mark.

The fake Elon account claimed Musk was stepping down from Tesla and giving away 10,000 BTC to commemorate it.

November 5, 2018.The first account hacked was Pathé UK, which was restored by yesterday afternoon, according to reports.

A third account, American book publisher Pantheon Books, was allegedly hacked as part of the scam as well.

Two-factor authentication could be utilized to help prevent scams like this, as the accounts may have been phished, but users of verified accounts don't seem to want to deal with the extra hassle to access their feed.

"Many verified accounts are used by multiple people, and I suspect some switch off some of the security features for ease of use - that's where things tend to start going wrong," Chris Boyd, lead malware intelligence at Malwarebytes, stated in an interview with tech site ZDnet.

Were the scammers able to steal more money as a result of the blue check marks? It likely lent a degree of credibility to something that would've immediately been dismissed as a scam otherwise.