July 5, 2022: -A hacker dealt with the social media accounts of the British Army to push people toward cryptocurrency scams.
The hacker carried over the army’s Twitter and YouTube profiles, or hackers whose identity was not previously learned on Sunday. The Twitter account’s title was “possessed,” and its profile and banner pictures were altered to match a nonfungible token grouping known as “The Possessed.”
The official Twitter account of Possessed warned users of a “new verified SCAM account” copying the collection of NFTs tokens representing ownership of pieces of online content.
Earlier Sunday, the account was renamed “Bapesclan,” the name of another NFT pack, while its flag image was altered to a cartoon ape with clown makeup on. The hacker then started to tweet posts promoting NFT giveaway schemes.
Meanwhile, the name of the U.K. military’s YouTube account was changed to “Ark Invest,” the investment company of Tesla and bitcoin bull Cathie Wood.
The hacker vanished all the account’s videos and replaced them with live streams of old clips taken from a conversation with Elon Musk and Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey on bitcoin that Ark hosted in July 2021. The text was added to the live streams directing users to crypto scam websites.
“The breach of the Twitter and YouTube narratives that occurred today has been resolved, and an investigation is underway,” Britain’s Ministry of Defense tweeted on Monday.
“The Army takes information security overly seriously, and until their investigation is complete, it would be inappropriate to comment further.”
A Twitter spokesperson confirmed the British Army’s account “was compromised and has since been locked and secured.”
“The account holders have regained access, and the account is back up and running,” the representative told CNBC through email.
Tobias Ellwood, a British Conservative lawmaker who chairs the defense committee in Parliament, said the breach “looks serious.”
“I hope the investigation results and actions are taken choice be shared appropriately.”
It’s not the first time hackers have exploited high-profile social media accounts to promote crypto scams.
