Hackers took over the British Army’s official social media pages on Sunday, exploiting them for more than four hours to promote fake NFT collections and cryptocurrency frauds.
Over the past several years, crypto frauds and hacks have harmed billions of people globally and have increased in frequency on a daily basis.
Elon Musk, Joe Biden, and many other well-known people have had their Twitter accounts hacked in the past. Additionally, there are several instances of these accounts being used in bitcoin fraud.
In the United States, there were nearly 7,000 victims of cryptocurrency scams between October 2020 and the next year through March, according to data of frauds kept by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). These victims together lost close to $80 million.
Twitter and YouTube Accounts of the British Army Used In Crypto Scam
The Army’s Twitter and YouTube accounts were compromised by the hacker, whose identity is still unknown. The Twitter account was renamed to PSSSSD, and “The PossessedNFT” was highlighted in the profile pictures. In the meanwhile, the hacker also used the name of another NFT. The account name was then changed from PSSSSD to “Bapesclan” by him.
After discovering that the Army’s social media accounts had been hacked, the U.K. Ministry of Defence Press Office tweeted that an investigation had been launched.
On the Ethereum blockchain, there is a collection of animated NFTs called The Possessed. The studies that turned the test subjects into possessed NFTs were conducted by the PSSSSD Labs co-founders, Joe the artist and Tom Builds.
Well, on Army’s Twitter account, fraudsters tweeted a number of links to NFT prizes.
However, all of these tweets have subsequently been deleted, and the account has been reclaimed, after over four hours.
On the other hand, hackers changed the name of the U.K. military’s YouTube account to “Ark Invest” (Owned by Tesla and Cathie Wood). Additionally, they broadcasted old clips of Jack Dorsey and Elon Musk discussing Bitcoin in interviews live.
Both accounts were retrieved without incident, and the British Army’s official Twitter account issued an apology:
Apologies for the temporary interruption to our feed. We will conduct a full investigation and learn from this incident. Thanks for following us, and normal service will now resume
On July 3, the Ministry of Defense Press Office tweeted:
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.
