In a troubling new trend, multiple high-profile social media accounts especially their “X” accounts (formerly Twitter) have been hijacked to promote fraudulent cryptocurrency schemes. From media channels to celebrity accounts, these hacks have left no stone unturned highlighting significant vulnerabilities in the online security of social media accounts and how easy it is for the hackers to get through the verification.
7News YouTube Channel Hacked, Broadcasts AI Elon Musk Crypto Scam
7News YouTube channel which attracted an audience of 1.71 million subscribers, was hijacked and used for an AI-made Elon Musk cryptocurrency con streaming. Copycat stream, which attracted over 100,000 viewers before its deletion, depicted Elon Musk’s AI avatar hawk a cryptocurrency scam in front of the car of his brand.
Audiences were invited to install an application on their phone and deposit money saying that they would double the deposit. Seven’s main YouTube channel was then suspended, yet now the firm is solely focusing on discovering more in coordination with YouTube.
The social media account ‘X’ of the well-known musical group Metallica was manipulated on June 26, and the miscreants used it to advertise a Solana-associated token called METAL. These messages contained disinformation with references to Ticketmaster and the participation of the fintech firm MoonPay, which the latter company’s president Keith Grossman denied promptly.
The METAL token experienced that it had hit a $3.37 million market cap at a short period and then dropped out to $90,000 in several hours. The hack is still being looked into, and Metallica’s side has regained access to the account and removed the fake posts that were put up.
50 Cent’s Twitter Account Hacked to Push GUNIT Pump-and-Dump Scheme
Recently, pop celebrity 50 Cent, whose real name is Curtis Jackson, became a target of a cyberattack, which took place on his Twitter last Friday; the attacker attempted to post new tokens called GUNIT. The whole length developed was intended to be part of a pump-and-dump scheme whereby the token looked like 50 Cent was promoting it. This led to, a very high traffic rate in trading as the rate rose by 8,000% before plummeting. So, while the owners of GUNIT had been exposed, the latter still remained at around $150,000 market cap because investors were still investing in GUNIT coins.
Mark Cuban’s Gmail Compromised After Hoax Call
Another wealthy personality who became a victim of a phishing attack through a phone number was the famous billionaire investor Mark Cuban whose Gmail account was hijacked. Cuban announced that any email sent from his account after 3:30 pm PST on June 22 was not from him. This comes barely nine months after Cuban’s cryptocurrency wallet was emptied of about $870, 000 by the hackers who had been anticipating when Cuban would log into MetaMask.
Why are these Twitter Accounts Being Hacked?
Twitter accounts, particularly those of high-profile individuals and organizations, are becoming prime targets for hackers due to several reasons:
1. Wide Reach and Influence: Celebrities, professional athletes and executives have thousands of followers which is an easy way to reach a large number of people for those posing as a scammer.
2. Trust and Credibility: This is especially so where the Tweeter’s account is verified because followers tend to trust information from such sources. These are the accounts that when hacked, the messages they spread are credible and therefore people are easily deceived.
3. Ease of Information Spread: Using the retweets, shares and reposting buttons, information disseminates within a short period on Twitter’s platform thereby facilitating scams to such a large number of people.
4. Monetary Gains: Some of the biggest advances have been procured through cryptocurrency scams. In this way, and for the sake of earning money, they can take advantage of faith on the part of the followers by offering fake tokens or schemes.
Conclusion
Such articulations from some anonymous accounts are recent occurrences that show a fresh wave that sees flagship accounts compromised to be used in the promotion of fake cryptocurrencies. Established from the 7News YouTube channel and Metallica’s X account all the way to 50 Cent’s Twitter and Mark Cuban’s Gmail it is seen that no account is safe from such an attack.
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