British military’s YouTube and Twitter accounts were hacked for promoting crypto scams

Britain’s Defense Ministry confirmed on Sunday that both the Facebook and Twitter accounts of the British military had been hacked and used to promote cryptocurrency scams. It is not clear when exactly the hackers took over both accounts, but they are both back to normal.

“We are aware of breaches of the military’s Twitter and YouTube accounts and an investigation is underway,” Defense Ministry Press Office said on twitter, “The military takes information security very seriously and is addressing this issue.”

Hackers hijacked the Twitter page of the British Army, swapping the organization’s profile picture, bio and cover photo to make it appear to belong to The Possessed NFT Collection. The account sent out various retweets for the NFT giveaway, and its pinned tweets linked users to a fake NFT mining website.

Bad Actors also took down the British Army YouTube channel, removed all of its videos, as well as changed the name and profile picture to resemble legal investment firm Arch Invest. Hackers replaced videos of the British military with a series of old livestreams that featured former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey and Tesla CEO Elon Musk. These livestreams were previously broadcast as part of The Bee Word conference organized by Arch Invest last June, but the hackers added an overlay that encouraged users to participate in the crypto scam. The channel broadcast four livestreams simultaneously, some of which attracted thousands of viewers.

as Web3 Is Going Just Great As blogger Molly White points out, scammers who took over accounts of the British Army carried out their plan with a strategy somewhat similar to those used in recent days. In March, hackers took over the Twitter account belonging to MKLeo, one of the world’s top super smash bros ultimate players, and this is used to make the fake NFTs look as if they were connected to The Possessed. Just two months after that incident, scammers managed to steal $1.3 million using the same Arch Invest livestream that was repurposed for this hack.

Twitter spokesperson Rocio Wives told ledge That the British Army account Twitter “has since been closed and secured,” and that “account holders have now gained access and the account is back up and running.” Google did not immediately respond ledgeComment request.