This Sunday, the British Army’s social networks were hacked to spread phishing links. While the attackers renamed the Twitter account to look like an NFT project, the YouTube channel was changed to look like that of the investment fund Ark Invest.
British Army’s Twitter and YouTube publish phishing links
On Sunday, the British Army’s Twitter account and YouTube channel were hacked and posted phishing scams. While the situation has since returned to normal on Twitter, the Army has launched an investigation and apologized.
For several hours, the British Army’s Twitter account was effectively renamed to impersonate various non-fungible token (NFT) collections. One example we can point to is The Possessed collection, just launched on OpenSea.
We don’t know to what extent people may have fallen for the trap. We don’t know to what extent people could have fallen into the trap, but it’s a safe bet that the various links published were leading to the authorization of a malicious smart contract.
As for YouTube, the hackers went even further. They redesigned the channel so that it resembled that of Ark Invest, the investment fund of Cathie Wood. Live videos were then broadcasted to suggest interviews with Elon Musk.
Viewers were then redirected to QR codes to participate in a supposed giveaway. This scam attempt, common in our ecosystem, claims that if one sends a sum of BTC or ETH to a certain address, double will be sent back to us.
Phishing in cryptos
While the involvement of the British Army is surprising to say the least, phishing attempts are common in our ecosystem. Last May, the artist Beeple was also the victim of a similar hack. This resulted in over $400,000 in theft.
On the other hand, there are more or less convincing phishing attempts via email. For example, the attacker will try to make his target believe that he needs to restore his MetaMask wallet. Whatever form these scams take, the objective remains the theft of cryptocurrencies. Unfortunately, the only way to avoid being fooled is to be vigilant.
Regarding the British Army’s YouTube channel, it has not yet been restored at the time of writing. For its part, the Ministry of Defense has not communicated on the possible progress of the investigation either.
