Report: Hackers Steal Over $691,000 in Phishing Attack on Social Media

Hackers reportedly gained control of the X, formerly Twitter, account of Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin and stole more than $691,000 from unsuspecting victims.

The attack was carried out through a phishing link that provided unauthorized access to people’s wallets, with a significant portion of the value that was taken from the individuals’ wallets being in the form of non-fungible tokens (NFTs), CoinDesk reported Monday (Sept. 11), citing blockchain analyst ZachXBT.

The attack was initiated through a tweet containing the malicious link, which has since been deleted, according to the report.

The exact method used by the hackers remains unclear, as ZachXBT refrained from speculating on whether Buterin fell victim to a “SIM swap” attack, the report said. SIM swapping, a method where control of a person’s phone number is taken to bypass two-factor authentication on websites like crypto exchanges and social media platforms, is one potential avenue through which the attack could have been executed.

This incident adds to the growing list of cryptocurrency-related security breaches, per the report. Earlier this year, it was reported that crypto investors lost $54 million in a single month due to rug pulls, scams and hacks.

In a similar vein, the official website of the Terra blockchain was recently compromised by hackers who posted a series of malicious links, according to the report. The extent of the stolen funds remains unclear.

PYMNTS Intelligence found that nearly half of all organizations reported being targeted by fraud in 2022, with the fraud stemming from a wide variety of sources and aimed at a range of targets.

Bad actors are constantly developing new techniques and technologies to steal hard-earned revenue and data, according to “Fraud Technology Trends 2022,” a PYMNTS and DataVisor collaboration.

One study found that 97% of eCommerce fraud prevention decision-makers around the world had experienced some sort of fraud at their organizations within the past 24 months.

In an August hack, crypto lender Exactly Protocol lost as much as $12 million when targeted in a bridge exploit. The hacker used an exploiter contract on Ethereum to move deposits to Optimism and then bridged the stolen funds back to Ethereum.

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