NFT fraudsters hack the Twitter account of an ESPN baseball reporter

The digital asset sector has grown significantly over the past year, and non-fungible tokens (NFTs) have stood as assets that have seen a high level of adoption. While this adoption can be good for prices, it increases the risk of fraud.

NFT scammers recently attacked the Twitter account of Jeff Passan, a reporter at ESPN Major League Baseball. Passan stated that this attack was the “biggest news day” of this entire life.

NFT scammers hijack Twitter account of ESPN reporter

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The attackers that gained access to the Twitter account of the reporter promoted an NFT giveaway. The giveaway was for the Skulltoons NFT project, with the attack coming when the Twitter account of Passan was attracting much attention from the sporting community.

The MLB and the Players Association (MLBPA) have been involved in a lengthy debate over a labour deal that led to game cancellation. Passan’s Twitter account was in the mid of this deal as it had been used to break the news of an agreement between the involved parties regarding an international draft.

Much attention has been drawn to this Twitter account as people wait for the next bit of news regarding the deal. Hackers used this opportunity to gain unauthorized access and promote a giveaway for the Skulltoons NFT project.

After this attack, Passan’s user name was changed to “Jeff.eth”. His profile picture was also changed to another that depicted the image of the NFTs. The bio of his Twitter account also changed to “NFT Enthusiast, MLB insider, Father, Husband, Mod for @skulltoonsNFT, @Azukizen, @thugbirdz.”

Passan has since deleted the tweets related to this NFT. However, the screenshots that have been saved show that the hackers had posted that Passan was allowing 20 people to participate in a presale. To participate, users had to click on a link provided.

The team behind the Skulltoons NFT has denied being involved in the scam, and it has warned the community to be aware of scams targeting the community. “We are not affiliated with Jeff in any capacity. We hope that he’s able to get his Twitter back ASAP,” the Skulltoons NFT team noted.

However, this attack did not last for very long. The ESPN cybersecurity team quickly recovered Passan’s account in around two hours. The tweets associated with the giveaway were deleted, and Passan immediately posed that he was back to affirm that he had regained control of his account.

This is not the first time that hackers are targeting the accounts of popular people on Twitter to promote fake scams. They use popular people’s accounts to dupe them into falling victims to promotions that might look legit at first.

Twitter is not the only target of these hackers. The YouTube account of Floyd Mayweather was targeted to promote such fake crypto scams. The YouTube accounts of popular crypto sites such as Box Mining, Altcoin Buzz, Ivan on Tech and BitBoy have also been targeted.