A NEW VERSION of a classic online scam is percolating on Twitter. And while anyone even halfway paying attention likely wouldn't fall for it, the trick has already raked in thousands of dollars of ethereum and bitcoin in less than a week.
The scheme itself is pretty straightforward: Attackers make Twitter handles that closely mimic the verified accounts of well-known figures like Elon Musk, John McAfee, or Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin. Then they respond to one of those genuine tweets, giving the appearance of having started a thread, in which they claim that they'll send a significant quantity of cryptocurrency (like 2 bitcoin) to anyone who sends a smaller amount of currency (like 0.02 bitcoin) to a particular wallet. Yup, that's it. As of publication, you can see new attempts popping up on Twitter every few minutes.
"It's like a social media impersonation mixed with a classic Nigerian prince scam," says Crane Hassold, a threat intelligence manager at the security firm PhishLabs, who previously worked as a digital behavior analyst for the FBI. "Twitter will likely start blocking the accounts making the posts, but the level of effort needed for this scam is so low that it'll probably be a cat and mouse game, and the return on investment at the beginning will be pretty good for the actor."
what do you think about this, guys
whether social media twitter can not be trusted anymore ?