Crypto Scammers Successfully Hack British Army’s YouTube & Twitter Accounts

Cybercriminals earlier on Sunday, hacked the official Twitter and YouTube accounts of the British military and posted notices promoting a cryptocurrency scam.

The hackers changed the name of the Twitter account to “psssd” and the profile and banner photos were changed to an image to represent “The Possessed”, a non-fungible token collection.

The Possessed’s official Twitter account then warned of a “new verified SCAM account” meant to impersonate NFT collections, According to CNBC.

NFTs are effectively digital certificates of authenticity backed by blockchain technology that can be attached to digital art or anything that comes in digital form, such as audio files, video clips, or animated stickers.

The hackers changed the name of the account to “Bapsklan”, another NFT collection whose logo is a cartoon app that wears clown makeup. The banner image was changed to reflect the logo. The hackers also started retweeting posts promoting NFT schemes.

On YouTube, the official account of the British Army was renamed “Ark Invest”, a firm founded and led by famed investor Cathy Wood.

Wood is known to be an avid promoter of bitcoin and Tesla.

The hacker also deleted all the videos in the account. Instead, he uploaded clips showing interviews with Tesla CEO Elon Musk and former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey.

Both Twitter and YouTube accounts have been reinstated to the British military. The hack was confirmed by the British Defense Ministry on Monday.

“The breach in the Army’s Twitter and YouTube accounts that took place earlier today has been resolved and investigation is underway,” the ministry tweeted on Monday.

“The military takes information security very seriously and until their investigation is complete, it would be inappropriate to comment further.”

Twitter spokesperson confirmed that “the account was compromised and has since been closed and secured.”

“Account holders have now gained access and the account is back up and running.”

The post has sought comment from YouTube’s parent company Alphabet.

British lawmaker; MP Tobias Ellwood reacted to the breach on Monday. He tweeted,

“This looks serious. I hope the results of the investigation and the action taken will be shared appropriately.”