Official Twitter Account For Vertcoin Has Been Hijacked
On Tuesday, developers announced that the official Vertcoin’s Twitter account which is used for a cryptocurrency project has been hijacked by fraudsters.
Vertcoin’s Twitter account shortly after tweeted that the coin’s holding a 10 bitcoin giveaway and to be part of it, users need to send 0.005 bitcoin to a certain address to be part of the contest.
“Hey, everyone! Vertcoin and staff are pleased to announce that we’re doing a 10 BTC giveaway to our followers to celebrate Vertcoin’s success. Send 0.005 to 3HU5sj7kB6wT9zRwpbhCRrR28vKWjfkMKf enter! Winner will be announced 5/3/18 at 8 pm EST.
— Vertcoin (@Vertcoin) May 1, 2018.”
Suspicions were immediately raised following the tweet among users, given that developers had not revealed it elsewhere and it was quite similar to the several cryptocurrency criminal activities that have been associated with Twitter recently.
Shortly afterward, the suspicions were established a Vertcoin lead developer James Lovejoy tweeted from his personal account that the Vertcoin account had been hijacked. “DO NOT accept any giveaways,” he wrote,” they are all fake.”
During this period, the fraudster’s bitcoin address had received merely 0.007 bitcoin which is about $61. Besides, only a single user sent the 0.005 bitcoin, which to an extent means that only one user fell victim to the scam.
As of now, the tweet is still on the website, even though the fraudsters have also ceased from posting further posts on the project’s feed. It is still uncertain whether the fraudster’s sent any private messages while they were in control of the account.
In the recent month, there has an increase in criminal activities on Twitter, regardless of the fact the CEO Jack Dorsey has given assurances that the company is making all efforts to get rid of them.
Usually, the fraudsters create fake accounts that are similar to those of recognized industry figure and companies and reply to the official account’s tweets in a way to deceive unsuspecting users to send them cryptocurrency.
Yet, Twitter has also contributed to the issue. In April, the social media giant carelessly verified a fraudster-controlled account that faked to be the official account for cryptocurrency project Verge.
