The hackers completely rebranded both of the Army's social media accounts in an effort to scam thousands of people.
The British Army’s official YouTube and Twitter accounts which have around 362k and 178k followers, respectively, were reportedly hacked on Sunday, July 3rd. The Ministry of Defence of the United Kingdom confirmed the news and noted that the hackers targeted the Army to promote various crypto-related scams.
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The breachers reportedly first hacked the Army’s Twitter account to promote “The Possessed,” a new non-fungible token (NFT) developed by PSSSSD Labs to collect 10,000 animated NFTs. In a nutshell, the hijacked account sent out phishing links to a fake NFT minting website that emptied all of the users’ funds. On top of that, “BAPESCLAN” non-fungible token (NFT) collections were also promoted.
Back on the British Army’s YouTube channel, the hackers completely rebranded the account by changing its name and profile picture to an American-based investment company Ark Invest. On top of that, all of the past videos were wiped out and replaced with 4 consecutive live streams featuring the billionaire Elon Musk, promoting a way for thousands of viewers to double their money by sending crypto to a particular wallet.
After the British Army managed to regain full access to its Twitter account, it immediately posted a tweet and apologized for the incident, implying that a full investigation is underway:
Currently, there is no information about the hacker and how many people fell into the trap. However, the British Army stated that "the breach of the Army's Twitter and YouTube accounts that occurred earlier today has been resolved."
It seems as though crypto-related scams are on the rise now more than ever. Last year, various hackers and scammers managed to trick the players in the crypto community and steal around $1 billion, as almost 50% of hacking-related incidents come from social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Discord.
For instance, back in June, Yuga Labs, a blockchain-driven organization that develops digital collectibles and NFTs, suffered from a massive hack and lost 200 Ethereum (ETH) worth of NFTs, estimated at $360,000. Likewise, even earlier in June, the forthcoming NFT collection Duppie’s Twitter account was hijacked and one of the users within the community lost 650 Solana (SOL), worth around $18,850.
