The British Army’s official Twitter, Facebook and YouTube accounts were breached on Sunday for nearly four hrs, with scammers promoting rip-off nonfungible token (NFT) collections and cryptocurrency scams.
Soon after 2:00 pm EST on Sunday, the Uk Secretary of state for Defence (MOD) Press Office tweeted it had been aware the Army’s social networking accounts were compromised coupled with begun an analysis.
Nearly four hrs later, near to 5:45 pm EST, work provided an update the account breaches were resolved. The British Army’s official Twitter account also apologized for that posts, saying it might do an analysis and “learn out of this incident.”
The breach from the Army’s Twitter and YouTube accounts that happened earlier today continues to be resolved as well as an analysis is going ahead.
The Military takes information security very seriously and until their analysis is finished it might be inappropriate to comment further.
— Secretary of state for Defence Press Office (@DefenceHQPress) This summer 3, 2022
Screenshots from the British Army’s official Twitter account published by users show the online hackers promoting a minimum of two fraudulent derivatives from the Possessed and BAPESCLAN NFT collections.
British Army Twitter account @BritishArmy seems to possess been hacked pic.twitter.com/41HPtSeln1
— OSINTtechnical (@Osinttechnical) This summer 3, 2022
One screenshot shows the online hackers pinning a tweet to some fake mint from the Possessed NFT collection, likely a phishing link that will drain user funds if their crypto wallet was connected. Tom Watson, among the collection’s creators, cautioned the information was fake and requested his supporters to report the account.
The @BritishArmy continues to be compromised and it is presently getting used to shill NFTs.
Previous archive from the Twitter profile: https://t.co/dQmlxlY5l8 pic.twitter.com/gifpsOy000
— vx-subterranean (@vxunderground) This summer 3, 2022
Over online, the online hackers rebranded the account to resemble the Cathie Wood-founded investment firm Ark Invest, posting livestream videos of supposed interviews with Elon Musk and Twitter founder Jack Dorsey that have been being viewed by lots of people.
the British Army’s YouTube page, still underneath the charge of some crypto scammers, is running 4 consecutive livestreams with approximately 19,000 watching people these days. could be interesting if them who be seduced by the scam might have grounds to file a lawsuit the military pic.twitter.com/oVWrDsXKZ1
— Señor Rules (@wariotifo) This summer 3, 2022
Around the commandeered YouTube funnel, the published videos presented QR codes for viewers to transmit crypto to, claiming they’d receive double back, and promoted other cryptocurrency giveaway scams through QR codes.
It’s unknown at the moment who had been behind the attack, the way they achieved it and the number of people might have fallen victim towards the phishing and scam links. All the links, tweets and related material in the account breaches have since been deleted through the British Army.
Related: CertiK shares security tips following third BAYC security compromise in six several weeks
Reported by Cointelegraph, around $1 billion continues to be lost to crypto scammers in 2021, with nearly 50% of crypto-related scams originating from social networking platforms. The U . s . States Ftc even labeled social networking and crypto a “combustible combination for fraud.”
At the end of May, the Twitter account of NFT artist Beeple was compromised and published links to some phishing website which netted the attacker over $438,000 in crypto as well as other NFTs. The hyperlinks were created to resemble a “surprise mint” of the new Beeple NFT collection.
Later in June, an identical stealth mint phishing link was published around the compromised Twitter account from the approaching Duppies NFT collection, with a minumum of one victim losing 650 Solana (SOL), worth around $18,850 at that time.
