British Army hit by cyber attack after social media accounts post about NFTs and cryptocurrency

The British Military’s Twitter account was hacked right now and flooded with content material selling giveaways and competitions for followers to win non-fungible tokens (NFTs). 

The social media account’s identify was modified a number of occasions, whereas new profile photos included an ape carrying facepaint akin to that of Batman villain The Joker, in addition to a cartoon robotic.

Posts created from the account urged followers to affix competitions, with winners chosen at random to obtain NFTs – digital artworks which can be saved on the blockchain.

British Military’s YouTube channel was additionally compromised and changed with an account named Ark Make investments, which promoted a number of stay movies purporting to show an interview with Tesla founder Elon Musk about cryptocurrency. 

The celebration behind the cyber assaults just isn’t but identified, however the embarrassing breach raises critical safety considerations for the armed forces and means that different social media accounts may very well be in danger.

An Military spokesperson mentioned: ‘We’re conscious of a breach of the Military’s Twitter and YouTube accounts and an investigation is underway.

‘We take data safety extraordinarily significantly and are resolving the difficulty. Till the investigation is full it might be inappropriate to remark additional.’

The social media account’s identify was modified a number of occasions, with new profile photos together with an ape carrying facepaint akin to that of Batman villain The Joker (pictured), in addition to a cartoon robotic

The account later modified to advertise an NFT sequence known as ‘The Possessed’

The military’s Twitter feed at present has 362,000 followers, whereas the YouTube channel has 177,000 subscribers.

Ark Make investments is the identify of a world funding agency, although it’s unclear whether or not it was complicit within the cyber assault.

The corporate didn’t instantly reply to a request for remark submitted by way of e-mail and the corporate’s web site.

An NFT is a singular laptop file encrypted with an artist’s signature, which acts as a digital certificates of possession and authenticity.

Not like comparable applied sciences similar to bitcoin, every NFT is indirectly distinctive. This implies they can be utilized for extra than simply forex.

Prior to now few years, NFTs have been adopted by folks in search of to show artwork, music, movies and video games into digital belongings – and have been hailed because the digital reply to collectibles.

However as with all new trade or development, the NFT house is very engaging to scammers and hackers seeking to make the most of these with little information of the rising expertise.   

Scammers not too long ago focused the Bored Ape Yacht Membership – a highly-prized NFT assortment – and made off with hundreds of thousands of {dollars} price of digital belongings after unwitting homeowners clicked on phishing hyperlinks revealed by way of one of many assortment’s compromised supervisor accounts. 

As with every new trade or development, the NFT house is very engaging to scammers and hackers seeking to make the most of these with little information of the rising expertise

The Military’s YouTube channel in the meantime was changed by an account known as ArkInvest which presupposed to host conversations with Tesla founder Elon Musk on cryptocurrency