Watch out! Fake verified "Elon Musk" Twitter accounts scamming people
Back in March, cryptocurrency scammers used the name of Tesla's founder and CEO Elon Musk to fool people into paying bitcoins. Now, the same "scheme" has returned but in a more nuanced form, where verified Twitter accounts are being hacked and renamed as Musk's for fooling people. Multiple popular accounts already appear affected by this scam, according to BBC. Here's all about it.
Verified accounts being renamed for promoting Bitcoin frauds
Hackers, according to BBC, compromised multiple verified Twitter accounts and renamed them to Elon Musk. Then, after using the image of Tesla's boss on the profile, they tweeted out a Bitcoin scheme, asking followers of those accounts to pay between 0.1 to 3 Bitcoins to get up to 10 times return. The tweets had links that redirected unsuspecting users to the payment page.
See the tweet from hacked accounts
Other verified accounts used to make the scam seem legit
More worryingly, the hackers also posted comments from multiple verified accounts saying that they received money from 'Musk'. Some hacked accounts were used to thank him, while others were used to highlight how many Bitcoins they paid and how many came in return. This, as one could guess, made the scam seem legit to unsuspecting users on the platform.
However, some mistakes were evident
Though the hackers took a nuanced approach to fool people, it is worth noting that their posts did have some common spelling errors, which are not expected from the likes of Elon Musk. Also, the handles of the hacked accounts were unchanged.
Popular accounts compromised in the scam
While we cannot know how many accounts have been compromised, the popular ones were of British fashion retailer Matalan, film distributor Pathe UK, and US publisher Pantheon Books. As per Quartz, the scam link posted via Pantheon collected more than $150,000 in as many as 326 transactions. Now, all three accounts appeared to have been recovered.
What Twitter has to say?
Twitter denied detailing the matter, noting that it "doesn't comment on individual accounts for privacy and security reasons". However, a spokesperson from the company said Twitter has "substantially improved" how crypto-currency scams are tackled.
