In the latest example of Elon Musk’s identity (opens in a new tab) used in cryptocurrency scams, a cybercriminal targets the eccentric billionaire’s latest Twitter followers, security experts warn.
As reported by Beeping Computer, the scammer created a nameless Twitter account and put the company logo on the profile picture to create a false sense of legitimacy. They then began monitoring Elon Musk’s Twitter account for new followers and adding them to a list called “Deal of the Year.”
The opening of the list (which is public and visible to everyone) shows victims a fake Elon Musk tweet inviting his new followers to a cryptocurrency giveaway.
Fake gift
“I have decided to randomly select 1,000 new followers to be entered into the biggest crypto giveaway,” the tweet says, and if nothing else, a red flag should suffice with obvious grammatical errors.
The tweet also includes a link – Freedomgiveaway.net, where victims must go and complete a short quiz to enter the “gift”. The quiz is mostly open to the public, but it doesn’t really matter if you answer correctly or not.
As soon as you’re done, the site will ask you for your cryptocurrency address and promise to send 5,000 BTC to the lucky winners (around $84 million at the time of publication). But before they can be credited with fancy cryptos, they first need to deposit a small amount into an “Elon” address – anywhere between 0.02 and 1 BTC.
The site also has a lot of fake reviews praising the campaign to make it more credible and try to scam as many gullible investors as possible.
You can find an address where victims should deposit money this link (opens in a new tab)and fortunately, it seems that Elon Musk’s supporters are not so naive – the wallet is empty and no interactions have been observed so far. Let’s hope it stays that way.
By: Beeping Computer (opens in a new tab)