Russian-Canadian programmer and co-founder of second most valuable cryptocurrency in the world suffered a hack to his twitter account this Saturday which led to the loss of nearly a million dollars when an unidentified hacker seized control of his account, posting and advertising to near 5million followers, a malicious link for a giveaway accompanied by a message which read:
“To celebrate Proto-Danksharding coming to Ethereum, @Consensys is marking the moment with a commemorative NFT.
“Proto, honors the work of the devs who made this possible. The collection is free for the next 24 hours. Claim your piece of history,” the post exhorted users before offering a link titled “Explore the Merge with Consensys.”
The post which has since been deleted, unfortunately had malware which was able to connect to the wallets of millions of Buterin’s followers and subsequently giving the hacker access to their thousands of dollars in crypto assets, allowing the malicious entity to cart away $690,000, alongside a variety of valuable NFTs including the renowned Cryptopunk #3938 valued at $244,000. Buterin’s father subsequently warned his son’s followers of the attack, intimating that Vitalik had been locked out of his account and was experiencing difficulties with getting back in. In a gutsy display of criminal victory, the hacker(s) sent Buterin an NFT to commemorate the incident.
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Crypto scams associated with famous individuals have been rampant in recent times, a number of crypto giants have spoken out against the fragility of twitter’s security protocols under the control of its current owner, Elon Musk, saying that 2FA and log in ID should be separated from handle or email.
Billions of dollars have been lost due to crypto related crimes in 2022 and the figures are only rising, pointing to a gaping hole in cybersecurity which needs to be filled. However certain precautions such as the enabling of 2-factor authentication has proven very effective in offering a formidable layer of protection to users online.