A cybercriminal hacked the social media accounts of the British Army to drag people toward cryptocurrency scams.
The UK army’s Twitter and YouTube profiles were taken over by the hacker, or hackers — the identity of whom is not yet known — on Sunday. The Twitter account’s name was changed to “pssssd,” and its profile and banner pictures were changed to resemble a nonfungible token collection called “The Possessed.”
The hacked official Twitter account warned users of a “new verified SCAM account” impersonating the collection of NFTs — tokens representing ownership of pieces of online content.
Earlier Sunday, the account was renamed “Bapesclan” — the name of another NFT collection — while its banner image was changed to a cartoon ape with clown makeup on. The hacker also began retweeting posts promoting NFT giveaway schemes.
The name of the U.K. military’s YouTube account, meanwhile, was changed to “Ark Invest,” the investment firm of Tesla and bitcoin bull Cathie Wood.
The hacker deleted all the account’s videos and replaced them with live streams of old clips taken from a conversation with Elon Musk and Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey on bitcoin that was hosted by Ark in July 2021. Text was added to the live streams directing users to crypto scam websites.
