Vitalik Buterin, the co-founder of the second-largest blockchain, Ethereum, had his X account hacked to portray a phishing site that reportedly drained over $800,000.
The fraudulent post has been deleted since, and the account has been restored.
The blockchain security resource PeckShield was among the first to alert about the ongoing hack later last night, showcasing the suspicious post coming from Buterin’s account. It read that Consensys has decided to distribute “commemorative” NFTs to users. All they had to do was follow a link included in the post.
As with many previous examples of such fake airdrops, the link led to a phishing site.
Although that post has since been erased, and Buterin’s account has been restored, on-chain sleuths claimed that the attack was successful to a large extent.
According to EvanLuthra, the total amount of funds lost exceeds $800,000. Additionally, the first publicly-claimed punk NFT, which perhaps makes it the first-ever minted one, was lost.
Vitalik’s account was hacked a few hours ago!
$800k+ has been drained so far!
In the hack, we just lost an iconic NFT.
It wasn’t a normal punk; we lost the first publicly-claimed punk, essentially the very first NFT ever minted.
It was so iconic, that Vitalik Buterin… pic.twitter.com/onWbHq6bFU
— EvanLuthra.eth (@EvanLuthra) September 10, 2023
Binance’s CEO – Changpeng Zhao – also weighed in on the matter, urging his followers to “use common sense” when they read similar posts that sound too good to be true. Additionally, he stressed on the importance of safety on the Internet, and especially two-factor authentication (2FA).
Vitalik’s Twitter account got hacked. Use common sense when reading content on social media, even from large KOLs.
Twitter’s account security is not designed as financial platforms. It needs quite a bit more features: 2FA, login id should be different from handle or email, etc.… pic.twitter.com/oYQch8r2H0
— CZ Binance (@cz_binance) September 10, 2023
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