Scammers briefly took control of the British Army’s YouTube and Twitter accounts, to promote a fake crypto scheme, the UK Ministry of Defence confirmed on Sunday. The accounts have so far been restored, although it’s not clear when scammers took control.
In a message posted on Twitter, the Ministry of Defence Press Office said, “We are aware of a breach of the Army’s Twitter and YouTube accounts and an investigation is underway,” adding that, “The Army takes information security extremely seriously and is resolving the issue.”
It’s not clear who is behind this daring security breach which saw both accounts renamed and used to promote crypto scams.
The Army’s Twitter account was initially renamed Bapesclan and the bio, profile picture and cover photo had all been changed to look like it was associated with a legit NFT trader.
The hackers deleted all videos from the Army’s YouTube channel and changed its name and picture replacing it with one resembling that of legit investment firm Ark Invest.
The deleted videos were replaced with a series of old live streams from former CEO Jack Dorsey and Tesla CEO Elon Musk. Both videos had previously been live-streamed last June as part of The B Word conference. The hackers used the channel to encourage people to participate in a crypto scam.
The crypto scammers applied similar tactics to those used in March when hackers took over the account of MKLeo, one of the world’s top Super Smash Bros players and used it to sell phony NFTs created to look like they belonged to legitimate NFT trader, The Possessed.
Crypto scams have increased rapidly in recent years, continuously being executed in dynamic methods. This has made it difficult to pin down perpetrators as new technologies emerge.
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