Another Elon Musk Bitcoin Scam Hits Twitter

Elon Musk strikes again… or does he? The Twitter community has been abuzz ever since the platform first restricted, then banned numerous accounts impersonating Tesla CEO and his always one-step-ahead-of-the-competition company. Apparently, the impersonators chose to spread false Bitcoin giveaway rumors this time.

The idea is nowhere near being novel, but - let’s face it - one never gets enough of giveaways… so, what is it all about?

Tuesday saw a yet unknown group of hackers breach several verified Twitter accounts, notably UK retailer Matalan’s and UK publisher Pantheon Books’. Needless to say, both accounts’ followers number in thousands, which makes them perfect targets for hackers any time.

What these particular ones did was change the profile pictures and titles to trick the followers into believing that Musk himself was administering the accounts. They immediately went ahead and issued a series of promoted tweets, announcing loud and clear that Musk was giving away 10,000 Bitcoins worth $65m!

“I'm giving 10 000 Bitcoin (BTC) to all community! I left the post of director of Tesla, thank you all for your support”, the hacked Pantheon Books’ account announced.

‘Musk Returning 10x The Investment’

The community was asked to participate in the scam, by following the link provided in the posts. The link in question presumably led to a virus-infested web page, coupled with a QR code and a Bitcoin address. The message further stated that Musk would return 10x the investment per user.

“I decided to make the biggest crypto-giveaway in the world, for all my readers who use Bitcoin... To verify your [bitcoin] address, send from 0.1 to 2 BTC to the address below and get from 1 to 20 BTC back”, another post reads.

Even the most naïve of Twitterers would have noticed the obvious typo, which wasn’t the only one to boot… or so common sense would suggest. Apparently, the too-good-to-be-true offer has left the hackers with over $100,000 in gains, but not everyone believes that the funds come from the “Twitter investors”. The skeptics rather attribute the sum to hackers’ accomplices…

Not to underestimate the integrity of present day’s social media-inspired “journalism”, we should also mention here that the news unsurprisingly went viral no sooner than it had been posted. Some outlets claimed the BTC wallet associated with the scam somehow received $175,000, notwithstanding the obviousness of the sham.

P.H. Madore of CCN believes a “significant portion of the funds” to have come from the scammers’ own wallets - the move likely intended to allure would-be-victims to disclose their crypto holdings and the pseudonymous address.

Udi Wertheimer, a prominent Twitterer and coder widely known in Bitcoin circles, believes Madore to be right. Wertheimer has been quoted as saying that just because the target address has “some money in it” doesn’t translate into hackers “scoring it.”

Musk is a rather regular target of cryptocurrency scams, which have been plaguing Twitter for months. From time to time, scammers would impersonate his account in an attempt to trick his followers into sending them Bitcoin, Ethereum, and other cryptocurrencies. Musk himself has published a number of joking posts, and even got his account temporarily suspended on an occasion.

Earlier in March, Twitter CEO, Jack Dorsey, claimed that Bitcoin would overtake dollar in only 10 years. Read more about it here.

Source:

“‘Elon Musk’ Strikes Again, Bitcoin Scam Ensues”, Nick Chong, ethereumworldnews.com, November 7th, 2018.