British Army Twitter, YouTube Accounts Post About Crypto After Being Hacked
The British Army’s Twitter and YouTube accounts were momentarily compromised and used to promote cryptocurrencies and non-fungible token (NFT) scams.
The official army Twitter handle, which is @BritishArmy, later posted that it has since regained control of both accounts and is conducting a full investigation of the breach.
"Apologies for the temporary interruption to our feed," tweeted the British Army after restoring its affected social media accounts back to the way they were prior to being compromised. "We will conduct a full investigation and learn from this incident."
Its Twitter account had its name briefly changed to "pssssd" instead of British Army and its profile picture to an NFT from The Possessed, a project consisting of 10,000 animated NFTs. According to Web3 is Going Great, the first to report about the incident, the account published a number of tweets that contained links to a fake minting website in what could have been an attempt to scam the British Army's over 362,000 followers.
The report notes that the breach could have been trying to take advantage of the recent popularity of The Possessed to make a quick buck. The official account of the NFT project recently posted on Twitter about how another verified account was similarly hacked to promote a scam falsely associating itself with the brand.
The description of the British Army's Twitter account was also changed from, "Follow us for news and information on deployments, training exercises, ceremonial duties & regimental events. Recruiting @armyjobs" to "#1 metavesto clan on the ETH chain with multi-billion dollar experience. Powered by @chaintchlabs".
Its YouTube account, meanwhile, was turned into a promotion for investment management company Ark Invest. The channel reportedly started livestreaming interview footage of Tesla CEO Elon Musk, Twitter Co-Founder Jack Dorsey and Ark CEO Katie Wood talking about cryptocurrency. The clips also contained links to Bitcoin and Ethereum scams. The British Army's YouTube channel has around 177,000 subscribers.
The British Army said it's not known yet who is behind the attack, noting that they won't comment further until the investigation is complete.
The British Army’s Twitter and YouTube accounts were momentarily compromised and used to promote cryptocurrencies and non-fungible token (NFT) scams.
Both accounts published content that contained links to what are believed to be scams.
It's not yet who is behind the attack, with the British Army still investigating the incident.