This Sunday, the British Army’s social networks were hacked to spread phishing links. While the attackers renamed the Twitter account to look like an NFT project, the YouTube channel was changed to look like that of the investment fund Ark Invest
British Army Twitter and YouTube post phishing links
On Sunday, the British Army’s Twitter account and YouTube channel were hacked and posted phishing scams. While the situation has since returned to normal on Twitter, the army has launched an investigation and apologised:
Apologies for the temporary interruption to our feed. We will conduct a full investigation and learn from this incident. Thanks for following us and normal service will now resume.
– British Army (@BritishArmy) July 3, 2022
For several hours, the British Army’s Twitter account was effectively renamed to impersonate various non-fungible token (NFT) collections. One example is The Possessed collection, just launched on OpenSea:
The @BritishArmy has been compromised and is currently being used to shill NFTs.
Previous archive of the Twitter profile: https://t.co/dQmlxlY5l8 pic.twitter.com/gifpsOy000
– vx-underground (@vxunderground) July 3, 2022
We don’t know to what extent people may have fallen into the trap. The fact is that there is a good chance that the various links published led to the authorization of a malicious smart contract.
As for YouTube, the hackers went even further. They remodelled the channel so that it resembled that of Ark Invest, Cathie Wood’s investment fund. Videos were then broadcast live to suggest interviews with Elon Musk:
Meanwhile, over at YouTube, the British Army’s account has been rebranded to resemble ARK Invest and used to play those fake “double-your-money” Bitcoin/Ether scams with the Elon Musk/Jack Dorsey videos. pic.twitter.com/ovgNghr2Zb
– web3 is going just great (@web3isgreat) July 3, 2022
Viewers were then redirected to QR codes to participate in a so-called giveaway. This attempted scam, common in our ecosystem, claims that if one sends an amount of BTC or ETH to a certain address, double will be returned.
Phishing in cryptos
While the British Army’s involvement is surprising to say the least, phishing attempts are commonplace in our ecosystem. Last May, the artist Beeple was also the victim of a similar hack. This resulted in over $400,000 in theft.
On the other hand, there are more or less convincing phishing attempts by email. For example, the attacker will try to make the target believe that his MetaMask wallet needs to be restored. Whatever form these scams take, the objective remains the theft of cryptocurrencies. Unfortunately, the only way to avoid being fooled is to be vigilant.
The British Army’s YouTube channel has not yet been restored at the time of writing. The Ministry of Defence has not released any information on the progress of the investigation either.
