Although cryptocurrency is considered amidst the list of economic wonders brought on the surface up by the modern technology age, the name of digital money has been repeatedly stained with the woe of befooled investors who lost their fortune into too-good-to-be-true internet scams.
Today no one seems to be surprised with the Bitcoin ads flooded one’s favorite shopping website or cooking forum, despite some of the popular social networks including Facebook and Twitter prefer to steer clear from any sort of crypto-promotion.
However, crypto-scammers are iteratively developing ways to make billions of Twitter and Facebook users get hooked on a false Bitcoin giveaway, a topnotch type of crypto-crimes.
As a part of their shady act, scammers usually copy a Twitter account of some prominent figure who reaps sheer public support and have millions of followers, then publish some piece of fake news regarding Bitcoin or any other digital coin.
Usually it requires followers to transfer an amount of cryptos to get back a double coosh. Yet all of these end the same way: scammers disappear with collected funds, while an authorised profile updates unlucky participants with their misfortune.
However, the dexterity of Bitcoin scammers has leveled up as today they do not copy a popular account anymore, instead ciber-criminals hack selected profile and post fake news on the behalf of account’s owner.
Official Twitter Account of Target Compromised
The other day, Twitter profile of American retail giant Target was engaged in such kind of mess. Reportedly for a couple of hours, scammers gained unverified access to Target’s Twitter account that was further used to promote a fake Bitcoin gateway.
The false message written in poor English posted that Target was introducing cryptocurrency payments online and instore and to celebrate the event the company would give away 5,000 Bitcoin.
In order to enlist in the crypto-raffle, participants were asked to verify their BTC address by sending up to 2 BTC in order to enter a raffle to win up to 40 BTC in return. The post also mentioned that participants who sent 1.00 BTC would get an additional 200% back.
According to Twitter representatives, Target restored complete access to its profile as soon as the hack was detected. The company rapidly deleted the unwanted tweet and later it has issued an official statement saying:
“Early this morning, our Twitter account was inappropriately accessed. The access lasted for approx. half an hour & one fake tweet was posted during that time about a Bitcoin scam. We have regained control of the account, are in close contact with Twitter & are investigating now.”
Google is Next
Notably that Target is not the only victim of cyber-criminals as it became known that internet behemoth Google was compromised with very common Bitcoin scam as well.
An official Twitter account of Google endorsed 800,000 followers with the same announcement of a fake Bitcoin gateway.
Lately Twitter spokesman has acknowledged that undisclosed number of verified Twitter handles fell victims to malicious tactics. The company also noted that it revealed a bunch of cryptocurrency-related breaches that allegedly are responsible for infamous hijacking.
At the moment, Twitter is working closely with the companies suffered from unauthorized invasion in order to prevent this from happening in the future.
