An ongoing scam is being promoted on Twitter through some of the biggest accounts of major cryptocurrency companies and proponents.
These include the world’s leading exchange, Binance, the US-based exchange Coinbase, as well as the account of one of the best-known Bitcoin proponents, AngeloBTC, and even Winklevoss’ Gemini.
In the past few minutes, some of the most popular cryptocurrency Twitter accounts have been compromised.
A message about a partnership with a company called Crypto For Health appears on the Twitter accounts of some of the leading companies. At the time of this moment, these include Binance, Coinbase, Kucoin, and Gemini. Moreover, another popular account – that of Angelo BTC, has also retweeted the fake partnership, signaling that it might also be compromised.
The CEO of Binance, Changpeng Zhao, acknowledged the attack and prompted everybody to stay away from the link and to report the official Binance channel to Twitter’s support.
Despite the quick reaction of CZ, the attackers continue to compromise popular accounts. For the sake of this article, we opened the link, and it was immediately flagged as a phishing attempt. However, if a user doesn’t have the necessary precautionary measures installed, it’s not hard to fall victim to the scammers.
As a matter of fact, reports are starting to circle that the address that scammers are using is already raking in hefty profits.
Data shows that the address has already received upwards of 0.65 BTC at the time of this writing, worth almost $6,000.
UPDATE:
Since publishing the article, more accounts have been compromised. These include Justin Sun’s account and even Changpeng Zhao’s personal Twitter account. Other accounts include TRON Foundation, Bitfinex, Litecoin’s founder – Charlie Lee, CoinDesk, and so forth. The Bitcoin Twitter account is also compromised.
Some of the Twitter accounts that got compromised are reporting that they had Two-Factor Authentication turned on. In any case, this appears to be a very well-coordinated attack that’s targeting crypto Twitter in particular.
Tyler Winklevoss, one of Gemini’s co-founders just presented an update, saying that they had their 2FA turned on.
In yet another twist of events, it appears that Elon Musk’s official account might also be compromised. He just tweeted that “he’s feeling generous” and will double any amount of BTC sent to a specific address. It’s highly unlikely that this is true. The tweet has since been removed but in the few short minutes, the address received more than 1.6 BTC.
Stay safe and don’t trust fake giveaways!
