The official Twitter, Facebook and YouTube accounts of the British Army were compromised on Sunday for almost four hours. The scammers who promoted non-fungible token (NFT) charges and cryptocurrency scams.
Just after 2:00 pm EST on Sunday, the UK Ministry of Defense Press Office (MOD) tweeted that he was aware that the Army’s social media accounts were compromised and that an investigation had begun.
Almost four hours later, at around 5:45 pm EST, the Office provided an update that the account violations had been resolved. The official British Army Twitter account also apologized for the posts, saying it would carry out an investigation and “learn from this incident”.
The breach of the Army’s Twitter and YouTube accounts that occurred earlier today has been resolved and an investigation is underway.
The Army takes information security extremely seriously and until their investigation is complete it would be inappropriate to comment further.
— Ministry of Defense Press Office (@DefenceHQPress) July 3, 2022
The breach of Army Twitter and YouTube accounts that occurred earlier today has been resolved and an investigation is ongoing. The Army takes information security very seriously and until the investigation is complete it would not be appropriate to comment further.
Screenshots from the official British Army Twitter account posted by users show that hackers promoted at least two fraudulent derivatives of The Possessed and BAPESCLAN NFT collections.
British Army Twitter account @BritishArmy appears to have been hacked pic.twitter.com/41HPtSeln1
— OSINTtechnical (@Osinttechnical) July 3, 2022
The British Army Twitter account @BritishArmy appears to have been hacked pic.twitter.com/41HPtSeln1
A screenshot shows hackers pinning a tweet of a fake coinage from The Possessed NFT collectionlikely a phishing link that would drain users’ funds if their cryptocurrency wallet was connected. Tom Watson, one of the creators of the collection, warned that the information was false and asked his followers to report the account.
the @BritishArmy has been compromised and is currently being used to shill NFTs.
Previous archive of the Twitter profile: https://t.co/dQmlxlY5l8 pic.twitter.com/gifpsOy000
— vx-underground (@vxunderground) July 3, 2022
The @BritishArmy account has been compromised and is being used to advertise NFTs. Old Twitter profile archive: https://t.co/dQmlxlY5l8 pic.twitter.com/gifpsOy000
On YouTube, the hackers changed the name of the account to resemble the investment company founded by Cathie Wood, Ark Invest, and posted live videos of alleged interviews with Elon Musk and Twitter founder Jack Dorsey, which were seen by thousands of people.
the British Army’s YouTube page, still under the control of some crypto scammers, is running 4 consecutive livestreams with approx 19,000 people watching as we speak. would be interesting if any of them who fall for the scam could have grounds to sue the Army pic.twitter.com/oVWrDsXKZ1
– Lord Rules (@wariotifo) July 3, 2022
The British Army’s YouTube page, still under the control of some cryptocurrency scammers, is running 4 livestreams in a row, and roughly 19,000 people are watching it as we speak. It would be interesting if any of them who fell for the scam could have reason to sue the Army pic.twitter.com/oVWrDsXKZ1
On the seized YouTube channel, the posted videos presented QR codes for viewers to send crypto, claiming they would receive double back, and promoting other QR code crypto giveaway scams.
At the moment it is unknown who was behind the attack, how they got it and how many people may have fallen victim to the phishing and scam links.. All links, tweets and material related to the account breach have since been deleted by the British Army.
As Cointelegraph reported, up to $1 billion has been lost to crypto scammers in 2021, with nearly 50% of all crypto scams coming from social media platforms. The United States Federal Trade Commission even labeled social media and cryptocurrencies a “combustible combination for fraud.”
In late May, NFT artist Beeple’s Twitter account was compromised and posted links to a phishing website that netted the attacker over $438,000 worth of cryptocurrencies and various NFTs.. The links were posed as a “surprise minting” of a new Beeple NFT collection.
Later, in June, a similar stealth minting phishing link was posted on the compromised Twitter account of the upcoming Duppies NFT collection, and at least one victim lost 650 Solana (SOL), worth about $18,850 at the time.
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