A fake giveaway fraud that resulted in the theft of more than $22.6K in cryptocurrency was promoted by attackers after their access to KuCoin’s Twitter account was compromised. The bitcoin trading and exchange platform has pledged to fully compensate victims for all losses resulting from the hack of its official Twitter handle, which has been corroborated. Additionally, it guarantees complete security for all user assets on the platform.
The cryptocurrency exchange claims that even though the account was compromised for about 45 minutes. Its users had enough time to send 22 Bitcoin and Ethereum transactions, giving the hackers access to $22,600.
The issue is described in a KuCoins Twitter post. The thread adds that up until 02:00 on April 24 (UTC+2), we have discovered 22 transactions, including ETH/BTC, with bogus activity, totaling 22,628 USDT. We are presently looking into and blocking suspicious addresses to stop further user harm.
It was simple for them to be duped because the scammers set up a compelling campaign that looked like the platform’s usual promotional events, as some KuCoin users had voiced out on social media. In order to commemorate the exchange’s achievement of having 10 million customers, 5,000 Bitcoin, and 10,000 Ethereum were purportedly being airdropped on “kucoinevent[.]com,” the website hosting the malicious giveaway.
The phony giveaway claimed that everyone was entitled to participate, even those without a KuCoin account, and welcomed all users to participate by contributing any amount and earning double in return.
As is customary in this kind of fraudulent marketing, the con artists created fictitious user comments endorsing the legitimacy of the giveaway and assisting in persuading potential customers who might have some doubts.
Users who are impacted by this occurrence are asked to get in touch with KuCoin’s support staff at “support@kucoin.com” and to disregard any suggestions or advice from other sources. Furthermore, users shouldn’t report problems on the website or reply to anyone assisting. Twitter is notorious for fraudulent cryptocurrency support bots.
The business pledged to put in place new security measures in addition to Twitter’s current two-factor authentication security to stop such instances from happening again. They are also closely collaborating with Twitter to identify the attack vector and how, despite the numerous security measures in place, the hackers were able to take control of a verified account.
Scammers have discovered that hacking cryptocurrency exchanges’ official Twitter accounts might result in speedy payouts because postings from these handles appear trustworthy and are, therefore, more likely to defraud many people, even in a short period of time.
A hacker commandeered the Robinhood cryptocurrency trading platform’s Twitter account in late January 2023 and advertised the debut of a bogus token (“RBH”), which customers were invited to purchase for $0.0005 each. Similar trouble struck the CoinDCX Twitter account in September 2022, with the perpetrators spreading phony XRP (Ripple) advertisements.
Conclusion
In a recent incident, hackers gained access to the official Twitter account of the cryptocurrency exchange KuCoin, stealing money from some customers who were duped into participating in a false giveaway event. On April 24, 8 AM ET, the breach reportedly lasted for about an hour. The attackers created a phony activity at this period and put it on KuCoin’s Twitter account to trick followers into believing they were taking part in a legitimate event. The exchange pledged to compensate the victims and listed 22 transactions that were associated with the event.
KuCoin has advised the victims to get in touch with them for support and promised to put improved security measures in place to stop similar occurrences from happening again. Twitter and the exchange are also working together to perform additional investigations into the issue. Despite the terrible event, numerous community members praised KuCoin for responding to the attack quickly. The KuCoin Twitter hack, however, is only one of the numerous instances where scams have been promoted by hackers who have taken control of the official Twitter accounts of crypto exchanges and NFT ventures. The cryptocurrency exchange CoinDCX’s Twitter account was hacked in September 2022 and used to spread false XRP adverts. Similarly, in January 2023, hackers hacked into the Robinhood trading platform’s Twitter account and started promoting a cryptocurrency token.
