Bitcoin-related frauds are constantly on the rise, and its latest victim
Bitcoin-related frauds are constantly on the rise, and its latest victim is Google’s G Suite Twitter handle. On November 13th, the Twitter handle of G Suite was hacked to promote a fraudulent giveaway for 10,000 BTC. The hackers did not stop with the giveaway message; they also broadcasted that Google now accepts payments in cryptocurrency.
Google is one of the hardliners who has put total restrictions on advertising for cryptocurrency on their platform. The ban was announced on June 1, however, in September they eased their limitations, and allowed some of the registered cryptocurrency exchanges to advertise on their Google AdWord platform, mainly targeting the customers in the United States and Japan.
In another report, Google took a hard stand against the crypto-Jackers on its Chrome Web Store and Extension platform. Earlier in the year, it was reported that many hackers are installing a browser extension to use the browser and computer as a mining machine, without the knowledge or consent of the user. On Oct 1, Google made changes into its Webstore extension policies. Any extension containing “obfuscated” code will not be allowed in the Chrome extensions.
One of the spokespeople said,
“Today over 70% of malicious and policy-violating extensions that we block from Chrome Web Store contain obfuscated code.”
A never-ending saga of Twitter and Scammers
We are only into the second week of November, and the number of scams on Twitter seems to be rising upward. On November 5, different verified accounts of many users were hacked. The fraudster then changed the name and profile picture to imitate the CEO of SpaceX, Elon Musk. One of the scammer’s profile managed to collect in access of $170,000. To prove their legitimacy, the scammer even replied on a thread started by Elon Musk.
Similarly, the verified account of a Swedish Musical Band ‘Club 8’ was hacked, following the usual trend, the profile picture and names were changed to impersonate Telegram’s CEO Pavel Durov. The scammers then circulated a fake Ethereum giveaway of almost 5000 ETH and 1000 BTC coins. The two links were directly connected to the digital wallet of these scammers.
Metamask phishing detector broadcasted a security alert, informing users to avoid such kind of posts. We want to recommend the same to our readers to refrain from clicking on links which seem too good to be true. There is no such thing as ‘Free Stuff,’ especially on the internet.