- Kevin O’Leary’s Twitter was giving away free crypto assets to users.
- Twitter has seen attacks associated with crypto frauds in the past.
- Most popular Twitter hack remains the Bitcoin Promotion Scam of 2020.
Cybercriminals will breach anything they find vulnerable in cyberspace. Recently, they allegedly hacked the Twitter account of Shark Tank fame, Kevin O Leary. According to the now deleted post, it claimed to give away 5,000 Bitcoin and 15,000 Ethereum. The potentially risky links asked the people to send some crypto assets to validate their addresses.
Twitter Hacker Promoting Fraudulent Scheme
Not just this, the hackers posted another Tweet and said while impersonating the celebrity that “My account was not hacked and I announced the giveaway on TV”, reported Finbold. O’Leary co-founded SoftKey Software Products in 1986 in Toronto, Ontario. The company played a vital role in the edutainment sector by offering shovelware discs of shareware and freeware.
Twitter, the social media giant, is among the breeding grounds for the hackers in the sector. Where one individual is looking for a connection they take complete advantage of the fact and try to exploit them. The social media influence has reached a level where the followers will do anything an influencer will say. This has led the attackers to take advantage, especially when it comes to stealing money.
The crypto industry has generated a lot of investor interest in the past few years especially since 2021. The year was among the best periods in the industry, returning bags full of money to the crypto holders. This attracted more people as who don’t want to profit from their investment.
Recently, an individual claimed that he has hacked the data of over 400 million Twitter users and asked for $200,000 to not to leak it. According to a website, he said that he took over control using an API loophole. Twitter said in January that this vulnerability was fixed.
The hacker played the scenario too cleverly as the attack came amid an ongoing investigation by the Irish Data Protection Commission. The agency is looking into a claim involving 5.4 Million stolen user records. In July 2020, Twitter witnessed an attack dubbed the Bitcoin Promotion Scam. Malicious actors in this attack used social engineering to take over the access.
The NFT industry isn’t short of fraudsters either. In November 2022, an attacker stole some anime-based NFTs by posting hostile links which ultimately gave the hacker access upon clicking it. OpenSea, the largest NFT platform, witnessed a private auction hack where an attacker would send the user a request to enter a bid which, in actuality, is a request to transfer digital assets from the wallet for free.
Source: https://www.thecoinrepublic.com/2022/12/30/clever-hacker-impersonates-shark-tank-fame/